it was winter
by eliphya
Summary: AU. Hinata was 6 years old when she saw Naruto's family's bakery for the first time. Quickly, Naruto became her best friend and the bakery their special place. [NaruHina]
1. Chapter 1

**24 years old**

The golden ring twinkled in the lights that fell through the church windows as he slipped it on her finger, enveloping her hand when the symbol of their love found its rightful place.

"You may now kiss the bride."  
The groom's hand slowly moved to the bride's chin, lifting it gently, lingering there for a moment. Then they kissed, both smiling and embracing each other. Loud clapping erupted in the holy halls.

Hinata brushed away the tears in the corners of her eyes, grinning brightly at the bride and groom, who were preoccupied with exchanging tender gazes and quiet murmurs.

Her hand clasped around the bouquet that Tenten had handed her earlier after walking down the aisle. She studied the face of her cousin, watching his bride in awe while stroking her cheek just lightly.

Hinata watched them attentively as if she wanted to be able to report every little detail in case someone asked her later or in case she wanted to remember that one time she was able to actually see happiness. She would like to remember how Neji's eyes crinkled a little but unfamiliarly because he had never smiled this way, how his hand was still placed on her waist to make sure she didn't move away from him, how Tenten tiptoed so that her arms could remain around his neck.

Neji cast a glance at Hinata, standing close behind Tenten as her maid of honor, his eyes full of hope and merriment. Hinata smiled back.

Tenten turned around and abruptly pulled Hinata into a hug, the tulle of her wedding dress tickling her legs. Hinata congratulated her but Tenten didn't appear to realize it much and when she nodded her thoughts seemed to be levitating somewhere else but not here. She accepted her bouquet back, presenting the widest grin one could give.

Together the newlyweds descended the stairs from the altar, hand in hand.  
The applause reached its peak when they walked down the aisle towards the tall and heavy doors of the church, casting a smile here and waving a hand there. The doors creaked hollowly but the echo was barely perceivable from the noises. The people in the rows stood up from their places and followed the couple outside.

A breeze of cold wind swayed through the now open doors, reminding those in attendance of the freezing December air outside. But no one seemed bothered by it as they waved after them.  
Loud talking and laughing was hearable in- and outside the church. Some moved to the front to congratulate the parents of the bridal couple, big smiles and handshakes being exchanged.

Hinata stood there at the top of the stairs for a while, taking it all in. The tranquility of the ceremony had completely dissolved, people now meeting acquaintances or asking each other how they would get to the wedding reception.

"What are you waiting for?" Ino stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at her friend and waving her hand vigorously in the air.

"Ah, sorry." Hinata joined her in her walk towards the waiting room to gather their things.

"Didn't they look absolutely lovely?" Ino sighed dreamily and clasped her hands together. "They look so happy."

"They really do," Hinata confirmed smilingly.

Sakura was already in the bride room, renewing her lipstick, casting a smile at the women upon seeing their reflection in the mirror.

"One really can't but get a little jealous," Ino mumbled more to herself as she jammed her handbag with the contents she had sprawled on the table just half an hour ago.

Hinata stopped listening when she started to ramble about the amount of junk she had brought when they hadn't needed half of it. "Well, at least we were prepared for everything," she concluded when Hinata was standing next to Sakura by the mirror and checking her phone.

"We are going to the reception together, right?" Hinata asked while reading the message of her sister inquiring whether she and her father should go on to the wedding reception without her.

"Yeah, that's the plan." Sakura put her lipstick away and began fixing her hair.

"Good." Hinata slipped into her coat and threw a look into the mirror. The color of her lipstick had faded but she didn't feel like reapplying it. With a hand, she brushed over the red fabric of her dress peeking from underneath her coat. She turned around to Ino, who was waiting for her friends to get moving, her bag clutched tightly under her arm.

"Are you ready then?" Ino was already walking towards the exit of the waiting room, once again letting in the noises coming from the great hall. Hinata and Sakura followed her, rushing down the aisle.

Their steps quickened even further when they were outside and the cold air seemed to whip against their faces, which they tried to burrow as deep into their coats as possible. Greeting with passerby were exchanged halfheartedly.

Ino jittered audibly when she unlocked the car and let out a sigh the moment she sat down inside.

"Gosh, it's freezing." Quickly she turned the key and switched on the heater.

"It's probably going to snow soon," Sakura mumbled in the front seat, looking up at the clouds as if they could hear her prediction.

Hinata quietly nestled in the backseat. She hadn't felt anything before but now that she was sitting, she could sense how much her legs hurt.

Ino was still for a while as if waiting for her limbs to defrost but then turned on the motor and drove them out of the parking lot and into the streets. It was still early in the afternoon but all the life seemed to have disappeared from the city. The clouds hanging heavy and dark and endless above them. Even the pavement appeared grayer than normal.

"Where is Sai by the way?" Sakura asked after a while, maybe to break the silence, maybe because she was genuinely interested. She was still looking outside, clutching her phone in her hand as if it could ring at any moment.

"We will meet at the venue. He is probably there already," Ino answered, a silent smile settling on her lips, that even Hinata could see from where she was sitting.

"Figures. You usually drag him everywhere you go, I was surprised not seeing him at the ceremony." It was supposed to be a joke but the spiritless way Sakura had spoken, didn't make her words sounds so.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ino cast her a quick glance. "Isn't that what you're ought to do with a boyfriend? Spend time with him?"  
In response, Sakura let out a puff of air.

"Instead of scoffing like that, you should try to get yourself one," Ino countered and Sakura turned her head so quickly to her direction, that Hinata feared she might hurt her neck.

"I don't have time for such things."

Hinata sighed as the discussion continued. Even when she had embraced her role as the pacifier in this group of friends, sometimes she was tired of her duties as such.

She averted her head to see outside and suddenly their voices seemed to fade to somewhere very far away as they turned into a familiar street. They drove past Hinata old home and she looked up at the window that used to be hers, now decorated with star and moon cutouts from colorful paper and framed in pink curtains.

It was odd how a place could get a hold of someone even when a long time had passed since seeing it last. Hinata caught sight of the bakery, that had lost all its evidence ever being one. There were no letters on the windows anymore and the way it was abandoned it looked lonely. Hinata's chest tightened a little and her head flooded with memories.

 _Spotting the bakery was like finding a gem, a sparkling treasure in between ordinaries. This place was special, she thought, and bright, she knew that from the first glance at it._

 _Winter was around her when she laid eyes on the shop for the first time. The air was freezing, numbing her fingers against the glass. Her breath hit the window, that had the word "Konoha" spelled in golden letters and was decorated with lights. Strings of lights, gleaming, creating an illusion of warmth in the darkness of the December afternoon._

 _She didn't realize the glass door of the shop opening and someone stepping next to her, too occupied was she trying to see past the customers blocking her view from the baked goods, like seeking for the sun in the sky the moment a cloud decided to move in front of it._

 _"Hey little one, are you lost?" A woman had kneed down by her side. She had her arms wrapped around herself and rubbed them._

 _Hinata slowly turned her head towards her. The woman was still much taller than her even when she tried to lower herself to the girl's eye level. Hinata's gaze fixated the color of the woman's hair, so her head shaking was delayed. It was much more interesting trying to find words to describe that shade of red._

 _"Where are your parents?" The woman neared in a little and tilted her head. "Are you waiting for them?"_

 _Hinata shook her head once more and blinked a few times.  
_ _"I'm waiting for my cousin."_

 _"Is that so." The woman looked around, her braid falling from her shoulder. Hinata saw her breath visible in the air. "Do you want to wait inside?"_

 _Of course, she wanted to -since the first moment, she had caught sight of the window that seemed to keep all the lights the winter had sucked out of the city. So she stepped towards the shop owner, showing her willingness, her desire to go inside._

 _The woman opened the door for the girl and a little bell resounded above them, greeting them._

 _Inside it was warm and she could sense the tip of her nose, fingers in her gloves and the toes in her boots heating up. The air smelled so rich that when Hinata breathed in she could nearly taste the delicious, sweet flavor on her tongue. It fogged her mind._

 _The woman told her something and Hinata nodded when she hadn't even listened to a word she said. She walked behind the counter gracing the next customer with a beaming smile._

 _Hinata stood at the door for a while and searched for things she couldn't see from the outside, like family pictures and certificates in frames, varying in color, on the walls. The cushions on the chairs had motifs of cakes and cupcakes on them._

 _The room appeared smaller now that she was inside but when she looked up to the silver garlands hanging from the dark ceiling, blue and red ornaments that reflected the light and created a play of colors on the white walls, it felt like she was standing under the stars and the sky was endless._

 _There was a fair amount of customers around but she stayed unseen by them as she shuffled to the counter with the baked good. Golden sweetness displayed like treasures, that the glass kept her from touching. What caught her eye the most were the cakes, which looked so lovely that the possibility of any of them tasting bad seemed ridiculous. Some were simple, only dusted with something white that looked like snow. Some had written words on them, which she was unable to read. And some were decorated with fruits or chocolate, like jewels presented on a crown._

 _The counter was warm when Hinata put her ungloved hand on it, that left traces on the glass._

 _"What are you doing?" A boy's voice disrupted her in her admiration of the cakes. His hair was wild and unkempt, his fringe nearly poking his eyes, which examined her from head to toe._

 _He was holding a plate with a piece of cake on it, it had one single strawberry on the top of a bed of whipped cream._

 _"What's your name?" he asked but Hinata refused to answer, instead she pressed her lips together as if she couldn't trust her mouth from giving away her name._

 _"My name is Naruto." She thought that that name suited him very well and nodded._

 _After a while, he started to look around the shop, at times lingering in certain corners._

 _"Come with me." Naruto raised the plate higher as if presenting something to the people around when he wanted to protect it from falling to the ground as he moved around and between the legs of the customers._

 _Hinata trailed him with her gaze, for a moment she looked back at the pastries behind the glass as if they had an invisible hold on her and were keeping her from leaving, but then she followed him to an empty table by the windows._

 _Naruto put the plate on the round table before he moved around to climb on a green chair. With his small figure sitting in it, the chair seemed to absorb him with its massiveness._

 _He gestured her to sit next to him and even held his hand out to help her get on the chair. For some reason, Hinata didn't doubt his good intentions. She took his hand and climbed on the chair, feeling the soft velvet of the cushions before sitting down by his side._

 _Their legs dangled in the air even when they slid far to the front so that they were able to reach the table. The dark wood under the plate had scratches along its texture and reflected the lights on its polished surface._

 _"I get to eat one piece of cake in the week and this is the one for this week." Naruto got out the two forks he had carried in the front pocket of his pants and gave Hinata one. "I'm gonna share my piece with you."_

 _He smiled again, exposing the gap in the bottom row of his teeth. Then he used his fork to cut the cake into two roughly same-sized pieces, not even forgetting to cut the strawberry in half._

 _The result appeared rather messy, as the pinkish cream inside had busted out of its place between the biscuits. The white cream from the top stuck to his fork and a little on his fingers. Hinata glanced at Naruto licking the cream off his thumb._

 _When she looked back at the cake, despite the overall mess, she was touched that he wanted to share it with her. Somehow this piece of pastry felt very important like he was offering the world to her like it was the most precious thing he could give her._

 _Hinata raised her fork and took a piece, trying to cut through all the layers._

 _The sweet flavor of vanilla mixed with the freshness of the little pieces of strawberries melted in her mouth. Only after being ensured by her reaction that she was satisfied with the taste, Naruto dug his fork into his own piece._

 _A comfortable silence settled between them, where they watched customers come and leave with the little treasures in their hands, sometimes gazing at the two children and smiling. Naruto always stopped eating and grinned back as widely as he could. He often knew them by name._

 _As soon as he started talking he couldn't stop and Hinata wondered how Naruto had managed to stay still until now when there was so much he wanted to say. At times he couldn't decide whether to talk or shove another piece of cake into his mouth and Hinata could see the dilemma displayed on his face._

 _He told her that his parents had opened the shop when he was just a baby and that he practically grew up in this very place. His father was a renowned patissier and Naruto proudly pointed towards the pictures that showed his father standing next to people with tall white hats, that according to him, were quite famous too._

 _Naruto was just explaining how his father's cakes were the best when the front door opened and a voice called for Hinata._

 _"Hinata, why didn't you wait for me outside the house? I was running up and down the whole street." A boy with a blue beanie and his hair tied into a ponytail stared at Hinata with frantic eyes._

 _"Neji." Hinata wanted to answer that he had taken to long to get ready and that she had gotten bored but the stern way her cousin was eyeing her, she didn't dare to respond._

 _"Let's go." Neji grabbed her hand and helped her down from the chair, throwing undefinable glances in Naruto's direction, who was watching this scene silently but with furrowed brows.  
_ _But when Hinata looked up at Naruto again -still on the chair he felt far away now- he was grinning back at her._

 _"I know your name now, Hinata," he said, without giving Neji any attention, as if he wouldn't be able to understand his words anyway as if he was talking in a language only Hinata would understand. "You definitely have to come back again."_

 _Hinata smiled and for a moment resisted her cousin pulling at her arm, trying to get her to leave this place, that already felt familiar to her.  
_ _She nodded and let Neji carry her away. Naruto waved at her through the shop windows until she disappeared from his sight._

 _The patisserie between a bookstore and a traveling agency, just a few houses from her home, became her happy place and Naruto her best friend. Mutually and without words they understood why this place was special. And no one seemed to understand it the way they did. But that was okay. Because they had each other._

"Do you feel sad, when you see it?" Ino asked. "The shop I mean. It's vacant again now." Hinata twitched, it was as if someone had woken her from a deep sleep and the dreams she was dreaming just now vanished into thin air like smoke.

"Ino," Sakura retorted, as she thought that this topic wasn't something Ino could ask about so nonchalantly.

"I was just curious, sorry." Ino didn't sound apologetic but Hinata didn't feel like she had to.

"No, it's okay." She turned her head away from the window, the former bakery now long behind her. "The memories aren't all sad, so it's okay."


	2. Chapter 2

Hey, so this chapter is quite huge and all the coming four chapters are going to be really massive as well, just so you're warned. (The last one is gonna be a monster.)

Thank you for the lovely reviews, please tell me what you think about this one!

* * *

 **17 years old**

A quiet voice broke the silence of the night. "Hinata."

Carefully Naruto shook Hinata's shoulder, her head shot up the moment he touched her.

"What?" she mumbled, looking around and upon seeing Naruto's face, realizing that she was still in the bakery.

"I'm finished." Naruto pulled her up from the chair, his hand lingering around hers a little until he was sure that she was standing steadily on her feet. "I'm finished with the cake. Sorry, it took so long."

The clock above the shelf on the wall showed that it was 2:16 o'clock. Upon realizing that, the summer night behind the small cracked windows seemed darker.

She followed Naruto's hand gesturing towards the wide table in the middle of the kitchen. It was messy, with used bowls and knives spread over the whole counter, the table dotted with different substances here and there.

But right in the middle stood the round cake Naruto had been working on for the past hours. Something looking so perfect appeared so oddly placed in the middle of the chaos.

Hinata could see pride in Naruto's gaze as he ushered her eagerly towards the table.

He was still wearing the two pins in his hair, which he used to keep his bangs from disturbing his view. One on each side. She had given them to him when they were 10 and she had realized that his hair bothered him when he baked.

But as the pins had been her own at that time, they looked rather girlish with the yellow colored, plastic butterflies on them. He had said that they worked best with his hair and used them ever since. She guessed that he just didn't want to buy some himself.

Hinata inspected the cake in greater detail. It was coated in white cream with decorations on the sides that looked like something carved into marble. He had used different colors to draw adornments and make perfectly formed heaps of whipped cream on the top.

Naruto had once said to her that everything was allowed when baking as long as people enjoyed it. This had quickly become his one and only rule.

Sometimes he would take his father's recipes and create something completely different out of it. Often it wasn't even the taste but just the visual. He would put sprinkles somewhere they shouldn't go or put an extra layer on just to make the cake bigger or color everything that was white.

His cakes were fun because he obviously had fun making them.

Yet, no matter how wild and carefree he was or how disastrous the kitchen was afterward, whatever creation he had composed seemed perfect.

"So what do you think?"

"It looks fantastic." She straightened herself and looked at him.

"Really?" He skeptically examined the cake again. The thing was, that no matter how excellent Hinata thought Naruto's cakes were, he was always unsure whether to believe her completely. He said that she was biased and too kind to say something critical. To his parents, he said that they naturally thought whatever he made was great as they were his parents. _I have no one I can completely trust with this._

"It is." Hinata's finger stroked the sketches he had made while planning this cake. His notebook was full of experiments, results of several tastings scribbled on the sides, drawings and words sometimes erased by colorful splatters.

His sketches usually looked very different from the final outcome because he didn't have to mind physics when he drew whatever his head had breaded. But this time the cake and the sketch looked exactly the same. Everything down to the different colors had been planned in detail. "It will sell out in no time."

Naruto mumbled. "Well, I'm not so sure about that." It was the first time a cake he had made completely by himself, without any help or inquiries, would be sold in the bakery.

"I'm definite. It's wonderful, you did a great job." Hinata patted his arm encouragingly and smiled despite her sleepiness.

Naruto chuckled and looked down his white shirt, which wasn't very white anymore. "Better than my dad?" he joked, as he felt her praising him far too highly. But Hinata understood this as a genuine question.

"Mhm." She nodded, very sure of her answer. Naruto took a step back and stared at her, waiting for her expression to change and show that she had actually been kidding.

But her expression didn't change and they looked at each other for a long time, waiting for the other to break away first.

"But don't tell your father, I don't want him to get sad," Hinata said. Naruto laughed and removed the clips from his hair, putting them in a dish by the door.

"Got it," he answered, still snickering when he collected the bowls and other utensils he had used. Hinata was satisfied with herself seeing him laugh and she took a moment to appreciate the sight of him before she moved to help him clean up.

* * *

The air tasted crisp when they stepped out of the bakery and into the warm summer night. Soundlessly, they turned towards the direction of the nearest bus station.

It felt like one of those nights where you got the odd sensation that you were the only person in existence. Where you could scream and shout and no one would react because everything and everyone lay in shadows.

Naruto took a deep breath and it smelled like it was going to rain. He glanced at Hinata, who was busy with keeping herself on her feet. She slouched and it was ubiquitous how she could fall over any moment. His hand twitched to hold her, give her enough strength to take the next step. But he didn't.

"How easier it would be if I was still living here." Her voice was soft enough to be overheard as if she had accidentally revealed her thoughts out loud. But the night was still and there was not a single sound in concurrence with her words.

She was seeing the house where she used to live and Naruto followed the direction of her gaze. They had cut down the cherry tree next to the wooden bench. It had shed its petals plentifully in spring. Everything had been covered in fallen flowers and everyone had complained.

Hinata had never complained, instead, she had relished standing under it right when the blossom started to fall to the ground, resembling some kind of pink rain that only fell in fairytales.

It had been the thing that made the plain, white house unique, the windows of which were pitch black holes when they looked up at it.

 _By the time they were 11 years old, Naruto and Hinata had fallen into a routine, had rituals they followed religiously. When they went to school, Hinata would meet Naruto by the bakery because he would already be there as his parent had to set up the shop. She would wave from outside the shop window and Naruto would wave back before he would consort with her outside. His parents would smile as if the pure sight of them walking to school made them happy._

 _One day Naruto had voiced that it was unfair that Hinata was always the one who had to come and meet him. Even though Hinata didn't mind, they found a compromise in which Naruto would pick her up from her house whenever it rained and Hinata him when it didn't._

 _When school ended they would always wait for the other at the gates. And when walking home they would take detours sometimes to buy a snack, sometimes to play and sometimes just because they wanted to delay their arrival at home._

 _But at one afternoon Naruto wouldn't come when she waited outside the school. Dragging her foot over the gravel, she looked up whenever someone passed her, in hope, it would be Naruto and disappointedly avert her eyes down again when it wasn't._

 _Several times had she thought about leaving her spot but always stopped herself in fear he would show while she was gone._

 _When she saw Shikamaru walking down the path towards, her head raised expectantly. He was Naruto classmate and they were friends too._

 _"Shikamaru, do you know where Naruto is?" They boy seemed to be surprised to be called out by the girl, who rarely spoke when Naruto wasn't around. He turned away from his friend, who examined Hinata with his small eyes._

 _"Naruto left already." Shikamaru scratched his head._

 _His movements and manner of speaking always appeared so mature, that she often thought she was standing in front of a grown up when she interacted with him. "It's been quite some time since he left," he added and watched Hinata's face drop._

 _"Oh." She couldn't think of an explanation to why Naruto had left without her. So she_ span _on her heel and ran in the direction of her house, leaving a startled Shikamaru behind._

 _She paused at the crosswalk by her street to gasp for air but then continued running. In a rush, she passed the tree by the entrance of her house and hurried to the bakery, where even from afar she should see customers walking in and out._

 _Heavy breaths escaped her mouth when Hinata stood in front of the shop and looked inside the window. She felt something growing in her chest when she saw Naruto sitting at their usual spot in the corner working on his homework. He was sipping on a glass of orange juice and looked so carefree._

 _Slowly, Hinata walked up the steps into the shop, her hands tightly gripping the straps of her backpack. For once she didn't care about the sweet scent of the place or the decorations for the beginning of spring hanging from the ceiling but walked right to Naruto instead. He looked up almost immediately._

 _"Why did you leave without me?" Her words were like needles that needed sharpening, with the intention to pierce through yet overcome with too much sadness._

 _Naruto looked at her for a while._

 _"I totally forgot." He jumped down from the chair but still held on to his pencil. "I'm sorry."_

 _Hinata furrowed her brows because she understood that he wouldn't elaborate any further. He said nothing more, even after she quietly waited for him to do so. Naruto looked away to someplace behind her._

 _Her throat hurt and her eyes stung. She was probably going to cry when she really didn't want to. She wanted to be angry but she was feeling sad instead._

 _She realized what the feeling was that grew in her, betrayal._

 _When Hinata turned around to leave, she did wordlessly._

 _It didn't rain the next day but Hinata didn't come to meet him at the bakery._

 _"Did you have a fight with Hinata?" Her words tasted odd in Kushina's mouth because Naruto and Hinata never fought._

 _Naruto didn't confirm her assumption but neither did he shake his head. He just blankly stared outside, his forehead leaned against the glass. It was weird leaving the shop to go to school when she wasn't waiting outside for him._

 _He shouldered his bag, accepted a pat on his head from his mother and a "Chin up" from his father behind the counter and left the bakery, which felt weird when he thought that Hinata wasn't waiting for him._

 _The weather had gotten warmer with the new school year and for the first time since forever, there was not a single cloud in the blue and endless sky._

 _Naruto's feet shuffled soundly over the pavement but stopped when he saw Hinata sitting on the bench outside her house._

 _His pace quickened as he watched her wearily playing with the petals that had fallen from the blooming cherry tree. In fear she might disappear, he didn't take his eyes off of her slumped figure._

 _Hinata didn't look up from her fingers when Naruto came to a halt next to her. For a moment he stood there, not knowing what to do or say._

 _Then he walked to the other side of the bench and sat down. He knew that she was aware of her presence and was deliberately speaking. But he couldn't stop himself from breaking the silence._

 _"It isn't raining today."_

 _"I know." One after another, Hinata let the petals fall from her hand, the pink blossom joining the pool on the ground. "I'm sorry for getting sad." Her eyes were still fixed on the ground as if she would be able to find something when she just concentrated hard enough._

 _"No, I'm sorry for forgetting." He looked at her when she was still busy with watching the asphalt._

 _"I think I got sad because we can't walk to school anymore," she said._

 _"What do you mean?"_

 _"We're moving somewhere else."_

 _Naruto's heart sank and panic rose in his chest, his heart pounding loudly._

 _"Where are you going? Very far?" His throat felt dry._

 _Hinata shook her head._

 _"But to the other side of the city." Finally, she looked up at him and he couldn't remember ever seeing so much hurt in her eyes._

 _Anywhere but this street felt far away for her. She wouldn't be able to walk down to the bakery anymore or help Kushina decorating when the season changed or watch Minato teaching Naruto in the arts of baking when he ignored half of what his father explained to him._

 _She wouldn't be able to say hello to the old lady from the bookstore, who always had the nicest smile reserved for her. Or the uncle from across the street, who owned the flower shop and sometimes gave lollipops to her when she passed by._

 _She would miss all of it, even just sitting under this tree and watching the passerby, trying to figure out which had been here once before and which hadn't._

 _"When are you going?"_

 _"Saturday." That meant she had less than a week left to live on this street she adored so much. Hinata had known about her moving for some time already but hadn't dared to say it aloud as that would make it more real than she wanted it to be._

 _Naruto sighed and went silent for a while, deep in thought. Then he slid down from the bench and positioned himself right in front of her._

 _"Let's make our walks home really long then," he announced with a grin._

 _"Huh?"_

 _"Let's walk around 'til the sun goes down." Naruto took her hand and dragged her off the bench. "We can't change that you're leaving but we'll make the best out of it."_

 _Her eyes went wide, his optimism surprised her._

 _"But we have to get to school first to walk home from it." He pulled her behind him and they walked to the end of the street, crossed the lights, turned to the alley that led to their school. Not for a moment did Naruto let go of her hand. And as Hinata felt him squeeze her hand she thought how odd it was, that she wasn't feeling so sad anymore._

 _In the following every time, they stepped out of the school grounds Naruto would announce that he had found a different way home. And while Naruto guided her through streets, that weren't leading them home at all, Hinata followed him dutifully._

 _Sometimes they took three steps forward and one back, sometimes they counted the trees lined along the street, sometimes they stopped at every bakery just to see what they had in their windows. They would go into pet stores and give every animal a name, they would sit down under the shade of a tree and invent life stories for the passerby, they would buy cans of tuna and feed all the stray cats they could find._

 _Naruto took odd turns and sometimes circled a block but Hinata walked by his side without questioning him._

 _And when they finally reached home, the sun would already be in her descend and dye the sky in hues of orange._

 _On their last day, after they had finished the ice cream they had bought on their way, they stayed sitting in front of Hinata's house, their feet swinging under the bench._

 _When the streetlights went on, Naruto jumped down and bit her goodbye and as Hinata watched him walk away, she understood that it wasn't really_ about _the street -at least not as much as she had thought._

 _Naruto was the one, who made the street special. He was the reason she didn't want to leave. These past days walking home hadn't been so wonderful because she could say hello to the old lady at the bookstore or pet the dog that was always outside the supermarket but because she had been with her best friend._

There was no one except them on the late night bus. The driver greeted them with a suspicious raise of an eyebrow, which they were too tired to comment on. The air conditioner wasn't running and the air in the bus was hot and stifling. When they sat down far in the back, Hinata slid one of the windows open and took a deep breath. He always let her sit by the window.

Naruto could feel his shirt sticking to the sweat on his back and Hinata's arm felt cold when she touched him. Her eyes were only halfway open and soon after they had made their first turn, her head started bobbing up and down because she was occasionally losing conscience for a short time.

Sometimes she would lean her head on his shoulder but lift it again quickly as if she suddenly remembered something important she had forgotten. One time she rose her head again because he was shaking from laughing as he watched her.

He chuckled when she suddenly opened her eyes wide and turned her head to him. "I didn't fall asleep."

"Of course not," he answered. Her eyes were teary and she looked at him as if she had to concentrate really hard to hear what he said. "I told you, you didn't have to wait up for me. Your father is going to kill me as it is." He didn't even want to think about how late it would be when they reached her home.

"Don't worry about my father. Also, this was much more important." She shifted in her seat like she couldn't find the right position to sit in. "I wanted to be the first one to congratulate you when you're finished." She had said that several times this evening and Naruto liked hearing her say it.

"Oh, I forgot." Hinata lifted her hand to her lips and looked at Naruto again. Her body was shaking from the movements of the bus. Her knee was touching his because she had closed in and her cheeks were dusted in a shade of pink. She blinked several times, her expression still drowsy and her eyes still wet but then her lips formed into a smile and they began to sparkle. "Congratulations."

There were times when Naruto thought that he had reached his capacity, that he was at the limit of how much he could feel for her because he had gathered that much over the years, that he was filled with it. That he would spill over if he felt more, that he would burst. But then she smiled at him or looked at him as if she was showing him worlds with her gaze or said something that he engraved somewhere in his mind and he could feel it, his chest bursting again. Like right now.

* * *

The bell resounded above her as she stepped into the bakery. In the summer Kushina would decorate the shop with sunflowers. She exchanged some cushions with yellow ones and would stick little suns at random places as if she was playing a game with the customers and they needed to find them.

Hinata sighed when she escaped the humidity of outside. Dark clouds had formed early in the morning and it wouldn't take long until the rain would pour down on them.

Minato looked up from his work of arranging the cakes and pastries in the counter. Sometimes when she was really early, she could see him in his white button down jacket, which he only wore when he baked. He greeted Hinata with a smile. "You're early. As always."

Naruto's cake was displayed in the upper window of the counter so that it was easy to spot. It was already cut into same-sized pieces and somehow it looked more precious, now that it stood behind the window that hindered one from touching it.

Hinata walked around the counter. "Kushina isn't here yet?"

Minato shook his head.

"She is on her way. Naruto is already in the back." He motioned towards the kitchen and Hinata nodded, disappearing to the changing room to put her uniform on.

When she was finished, she tied her long hair into a ponytail and walked into the kitchen.

Naruto was bending over the table as he scattered powdered sugar over some pastries, with such a concentration that it seemed like he tried to pour the exact same amount on every piece.

She leaned against the doorframe and tilted her head. She didn't know how long she stood like this. Her eyes were caught on the pins in his hair and wandered to his lips pressed to a thin line.

When he suddenly looked up at her, she pretended that she hadn't been watching and began to tie the apron, that was loosely hanging from her neck.

"Did you get enough sleep?" He began to clear the table.

"I'm fine, don't worry. You?" Hinata frowned when he turned his back to her, without answering and lifted the baking sheet with the pastries he had just been working on.

"I will survive," Naruto grinned and passed her. She stood still by the door for a while before she helped him placing the baked goods into the counter.

Minato appeared behind them and watched over their shoulders.

"Good morning." Kushina stepped into the door and smiled widely, waving her hand as if she wasn't just a few feet away from them. "Sorry for being late."

"It's fine, we're already finished with everything." Minato greeted his wife with a squeeze of her hand.

"Good then." Kushina patted Naruto's head rather fiercely. "And I haven't seen you in a while." Naruto turned his head so that she would stop rustling his hair, distorting his face in a way that made him look like a little child. Amused by his grimace she walked to the back, laughing on her way.

"Always treating me like a little kid," Naruto muttered when he handed Hinata a rag to help him clean the tables, which was always the last task before opening the shop in the morning.

Naruto lingered under the air conditioner, feeling the sweat on his forehead go cold. The blue garlands attached to it swayed in the air and he dazed a little as he watched them swirl gently.

He regretted not having slept last night and rubbed his eyes, suppressing a yawn that carved its way.

"You okay?" Hinata mustered him from the other side of the shop, readjusting her rag on one of the tables.

Naruto waved reluctantly with his hand. "Just a little tired, that's all."

"Maybe you could go home and rest for a few hours. I'm sure we could manage even if it's going to be busy." It was Saturday and weekends were always busy. They had two cakes to deliver and expected a good amount of customers even when the clouds announced heavy rainfall.

"Nah, it's okay." Naruto's attention switched to his mother, who occupied herself with his cake in the counter. "Mom, what are you doing?"

"Don't worry, I'm not ruining your masterpiece or anything like that." Her voice gave no indication whether she was being sarcastic. He saw her set a little sign with the word 'SPECIAL' right next to the cake with a footnote, that it was made by Naruto.

"Aren't you overdoing it a little?" Naruto folded his arms over his chest. "It's so obvious that you want people to buy this cake."

"Of course, I want people to buy your cake." Kushina moved around the counter to see how her work looked through the window. She moved her head back and forth as if she was a photographer trying to find the right angle to shoot the perfect picture.

"But I want people to buy it because it looks good, not because you advertise it like this."

"You can't blame a mother in this situation." Kushina adjusted the sign and checked it through the window again, standing next to her son now. "But I want everyone to know, that you were the one who made it."

Her words were spoken so casually but they made his heart swell. His arms fell to his sides and he could feel his desire to embrace her but instead, he watched her smiling at the cake as if it could smile back at her.

"I'm going to tell everyone anyway but you know, just in case." She laughed loudly and Naruto chuckled as he watched her walk away.

Kushina kept her promise, suggesting Naruto's work to every customer eyeing the cakes as if she wasn't in any way biased when everyone knew she was. At the beginning, Naruto found her ways of persuasion funny but after a while, his face reddened from embarrassment because she continuously pointed at him. He tried to conveniently vanish to somewhere in the back whenever that happened.

Hinata and Minato, on the other hand, found the whole thing amusing. They nodded approvingly whenever Kushina began to sweet-talk a customer.

"Yo, Naruto, we heard it's your big day!" Kiba walked through the door, announcing himself even before he had caught sight of Naruto waiting on a table in the corner. Ino, Shikamaru, and Shino followed him, all shaking the rain off them and sighing in relief of the less humid air.

Customers glanced at the loud boy, who didn't mind, that he was in a public place.

Hinata greeted her friends and she shortly took Ino's hand to squeezed it. She showed them a table they could sit at.

"Where is Sakura?" Naruto joined them, tucking his tray under his arm.

"Studying. You know her. Even more, now that we're on summer break," Shikamaru muttered.

"She is going on and on about this being our senior year as if I don't know." Kiba played with a loose string on his shirt, which was wet around the shoulders.

"Ah, we wanted to grab Neji too on our way but he didn't answer." He twisted his head to look up at Hinata for a moment but turned away again. "Now that he is in college he pretends to be busy."

"I really think that he is busy, Kiba," Ino added in a scolding tone.

"Whatever. Back to business." Kiba now adverted his head in Naruto's direction, grinning innocently at him. "Bring here whatever you've made."

Naruto's lips formed into a smirk, which was a mixture of amusement and gratitude. He looked at Shikamaru and Shino silently waiting for a cake to arrive when they didn't even like to eat sweet things and then back at Kiba, who was making a big fuss about something that really didn't need it.

Their friends didn't quite understand Naruto's and Hinata's fascination about the bakery but occasionally they would show up, announcing themselves as if the whole world had been waiting for them, before settling somewhere in the corner and yakking loudly, eating whatever was placed in front of them. And he was thankful that they were the way they were.

"The shop is closed next week, right?" Ino's question brought Naruto back to reality. He nodded.

"Good, we thought we could hang out next weekend," Kiba said, leisurely leaning back in his chair.

"No, I can't. I'm busy," Naruto answered, so quickly he was a little surprised himself.

"The whole weekend?" Shikamaru straightened himself when he saw Hinata walking back to them, she had been putting the pieces so carefully on each plate as if she had been handling something living.

"I'm not sure yet." Naruto's muttering was enough to make even Shino raise an eyebrow.

"What's that supposed to mean? What are you busy with during summer break?" Ino's tone had started to resemble his mother's.

"Just busy. Let's do it another time." Naruto cut them off when Hinata appeared with four pieces of cake, placing them in front of her friends. She pressed her tray against her chest and wondered why they were all looking at Naruto in a strange way.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, Naruto is being weird again." Kiba turned to his plate and lifted his fork.

* * *

A boisterous growl of thunder made Hinata wince and look outside the window as if it had called her. In the far, behind the roofs of the buildings, she could see the sky illuminate in shades of blue and purple from the lightning, which, seconds after, was followed by another thunder. The rain fell so hard against the shop window that it seemed like it wanted to break through the glass.

"Are you still scared of storms?" Naruto appeared from the kitchen and gave her a cheeky grin.

"Of course not, that was when I was little. " Hinata puffed up her cheeks, resembling a child ever more as she continued to wipe the table in quick motions. "I was just surprised."

Naruto placed a plate on the table right when she pulled away from it.

"I thought your cake was all sold out." She dried her hands on her apron and followed Naruto in sitting down at the table.

"I saved you a piece. You haven't tasted it yet." Naruto pushed the plate towards her.

It was evening and Naruto looked more tired than ever, with reddened and teary eyes. Yet, at this instant, there was a certain gleam in his gaze -childlike and eager.

"What about you?" As an answer to her question Naruto pulled two forks out of the pocket of his apron and handed her one.

"We can share." He really didn't mind not eating, preferred it even that way. But he knew how Hinata was, he knew she would ask. "Take a bite." With his head, he motioned towards the cake.

The biscuit layers were colored in different shades of blue, laying between thin coats of white cream. She inspected the piece as if she hadn't already memorized the curves of the ornamentation on the side. She dived her fork into it and tasted it. Naruto watched her facial expression closely, prepared to read and interpret every jerk of her muscles.

"How is it?"

Hinata kept quiet for a while just because she enjoyed seeing him on the edge of his seat, leaning forward with such a striking tension on his face that the corner of her mouth twitched to break into a smile.

"It's really, really good," she spoke. The word "good" wasn't even close to the way the cake tasted but at this moment she couldn't think of another word. The was no vocabulary to describe how marvelous it was when something she had watched him create with his own hands acquired a taste which made her feel warmth and gratification. Because she had been there over the years, because she knew how much he had improved.

She tried to store the taste somewhere in her mind so that she would be able to remember it. Not only because it was delicious but because it was important. Because Naruto made it. "It's really, really, really good."

Naruto laughed and leaned back into his chair. "Wow, three 'really's', that has to mean something."

"Here, try it yourself." She slid the plate into the middle and turned it.

He cut himself a good piece and ate it, smacking his lips afterward. He smiled bashfully as if he was embarrassed at how excellent the taste was.

"It's not bad."

"Not bad?" Hinata leaned forward. "That's an understatement. Your parents must have freaked when they tried it."

"They ate it?" Naruto pushed the plate back to her so that she could continue eating.

"Yeah, I saw them sneaking some to the back."

"I can't say that I'm surprised." Naruto put his head into his hands and silently watched Hinata eat. He had already put his fork to the side.

The heavy rain had created a river leading down the street, carrying leaves in its stream. The rain softened the outside world, silencing and concealing everything else. Trees and bushes bowed down to the winds and as Naruto watched the storm sweep through the street, a tiredness overcame him.

"So is it the best one I made?" he asked, his gaze still pointed outside and his voice airy.

"Huh?" He could see Hinata looking at him from the corner of his eye.

"The cake, I mean. Is it the best yet?" Naruto only asked to keep himself from falling asleep right there at the table. He knew that it was the best he had made. He had planned it the longest, had worked the hardest on it.

Hinata looked down at her cake and poked it with her fork.

"The second best." She answered as if she had to contemplate whether to reveal her thoughts or not -in a soft, doubtful voice.

Naruto tilted his head. "Which one is it then?"

"My sixth birthday." She looked him in the eye but her gaze was dwelling somewhere in the past.

"What?" Naruto momentarily lifted his head from his hands.

"You don't remember? We had just become friends so you didn't know when my birthday was and when I told you that it had just passed you got upset because you had missed it." Hinata started smiling, that kind of smile that was sweet and just faintly there.

"Of course, I remember. I told you to go outside for an hour so that I could prepare something. I'm not sure how I even managed to bake that chocolate cake, my dad was fussing behind me and giving instructions."

Hinata laughed. "I should have stayed and watched."

"That cake was a mess," Naruto said and shook his head. "I poured chocolate over it to hide how messy it looked."

"Yeah. But I was really touched when you gave it to me." He had grinned widely, still with the gap of his missing tooth and traces of chocolate under his fingernails. She could remember everything, from the sunny weather to the red sweater Naruto had been wearing. "You didn't have any candles and it was too late to buy some, so we had to use the half burned ones from your previous birthday."

She laughed quietly and Naruto joined her as he recollected his distress when he ran around the bakery in pursuit of finding candles.

"But they wouldn't burn no matter how much your parents tried to light them up so we had to pretend like I was blowing them out to make a wish."

Naruto sighed. "The whole event was a mess." He had folded his arms on the table and laid his head on them, his eyelids heavy and on the verge of falling shut, their sweet remembrance working like a lullaby and playing melodic tunes.

"Not really. I was really happy that day." For her, that had been the moment when Naruto became her best friend.

Time passed, countless memories became blurry and faded little by little because that was the way memories worked. The perception that they stayed forever was wrong, no matter how important they had seemed in the first moment after a while the edges smoothed down and the colors went pale. Yet there were a few, which had the ability to be extraordinary and remain vivid and real. And this was such a memory, one that glistened between the black and white stains of her past

Hinata got lost in the flashback of her sitting together with Naruto in the big green chair, his parents had to throw out two years ago. After stuffing as much birthday cake into them as they could Naruto had leaned back and stroked his stomach like an old man. He had started dozing because he ate too much and mumbled something towards the ceiling while Hinata looked around the customer-less shop. The tables, the pictures on the walls, the decorations for the new year.

His parents had been walking to and fro, cleaning before they had to close the bakery when her eyes had found the cake again, Naruto had made for her. Even in its half-eaten state, it appeared so valuable, so worthwhile, she wanted it to be there forever. _I don't want to go home yet_ , she had thought. _Not yet._

Naruto's sigh brought her back from the reminiscing of her childhood. He appeared to have fallen asleep. His eyes were shut and his shoulders rose in a steady rhythm, his head still placed on his arms.

Hinata pushed the empty plate to the side and crossed her arms on the table too, closing in on him, their elbows nearly meeting.

His bangs stuck to his eyelashes and his mouth was just slightly agape. She felt his feet touching hers under the table but she didn't pull away. Even that little, seemingly insignificant touch only by their shoes made her chest feel heavy. It was incredible, the effect of his closeness.

They had agreed to wait until it stopped pouring and right now she hoped for the orchestra of rain and thunder to play a little longer. She wouldn't dare to wake him up and she was pleased with watching him rest. It was strange how she could sense such satisfying tranquility by just looking at him.

Hinata lowered her head to her arms too, not losing her view of him in the process.

She breathed in and closed her eyes for a moment when the sudden whisper of his voice paralyzed her.

"There's something I want to tell you." He opened his eyes slowly and regarded her in a stern manner.

"What is it?" All at once, the air felt different, tense, as if charged with something. Something that went through her mark. Any movement and any glimpse could be of importance. So she didn't move at all.

"Not now." Naruto looked away for a moment. "Let's go to the summer fair next weekend. The two of us."

They went there nearly every summer, everyone their age did. But right now it didn't feel like those time in the past, where Naruto had mentioned it in passing, where she could have declined and he would have been okay with it.

Because it wasn't about the part of them going to the fair, it was about the part of them going together. She knew that from the way he looked at her as if his wellbeing depended on her agreeing to go.

Hinata swallowed hard and clenched her fists so tightly, that she could feel her nails dig into her flesh. The electricity of his gaze sucked the air out of her lungs.

She nodded because she couldn't trust her voice.

 **11 years old**

"So, how is your new place?"

Hinata stopped tampering with the cord of the telephone caught in the gap between the door and its frame. She sat on the floor, her naked feet rubbing against the carpet of her new bedroom. From the gap, a strip of light fell on the floor of the otherwise dark room.

"It's different."

"That's a given." Naruto paused for a while, where she could hear rustling on the other side of the line. "Why, is it bad?"

Naruto had sneaked the landline into his room and now wrestled with the pillow he had placed against the wall. At the beginning of the phone call, he had tried to speak under his breath to not catch the attention of his parents but his voice wasn't meant for whispers, so he had gradually attained his normal tone again.

 _It's not as good as my old home._ "It not so bad." Their house was bigger now and the parquet shined as if it hadn't been walked on before. There was no sound of traffic when they opened a window, there was no dent in the floor of the entrance to the kitchen and the color of the wallpaper wasn't fading in some places.

"I have my own room now." She tried to sound enthusiastic but it was still a fact she needed time to get used to. She would no more hear strange sounds coming from her sister Hanabi at 3 am in the morning or trip over one of her toys, which she never bothered to put away. Hanabi wouldn't ask her odd questions when she was on the verge of falling asleep or unnerve her with her noisy antics when she was trying to do her homework.

Yet when she looked around the room, most of her things still in boxes, she saw her furniture in the shadows of the night and there was only one bed and it seemed lonely.

"That's good, right?" Naruto didn't sound so convinced himself.

"I think it is."

They kept silent for a while, in which Hinata could hear her father walking past her door several times, pretending that he didn't see the cord leading from the living room to her bedroom. There was the muffled voice of the tv, which he had finally managed to set up.

"It will be strange not walking to school with you anymore." Naruto thought of Monday and how there would be no Hinata standing in front of the bakery waiting for him. "But we will still see each other at school and you can come and visit the bakery."

"Yeah." She knew that he tried to make her feel better. Make her think that everything was going to be alright. Because he was Naruto and that was how he was. And if she wasn't feeling so bitter, she would have appreciated it with the gravest gratitude.

But her thought drifted somewhere else. "Naruto?"

Naruto pressed the phone harder against his ear like he tried to decipher the words she spoke in her silence.

"Yeah?"

"We will stay friends, right?" she asked after a bit of not saying anything. "Just like before."

"Of course, we will be." Naruto sounded offended. He had sat up so quickly that he had hit his foot against a bedpost. Wincing at the pain running through his leg, he rubbed his toes.

"But we won't be able to see each other that much anymore and I can't go to the bakery anymore and we will find different friends too." She feared that the street had been the thing that had kept them together, that that had been the glue, the connection. And when that was gone, Naruto would be gone too. Nothing scared her more than that.

"That doesn't matter." There was a confidence in his voice, that calmed Hinata's heart from beating so fast in her anxiety.

"So even when we're far apart, we will still be best friends?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't we be?"


	3. Chapter 3

**17 years old**

"That must be Naruto," Hinata mumbled when she heard the bell, moving to stand up from the dinner table.

"Of course it's Naruto, he always manages to arrive the latest," Sakura responded, not looking up from her book, which she was busy taking notes from.

Hinata snickered as she passed her, Ino and Kiba watching her go as Shikamaru and Shino kept scribbling something in their notebooks.

She could hear their muffled voices conversing when Hinata put her hand on the handle of the front door. For a moment she remained like this, taking in a deep breath and hoping her face wouldn't redden too much upon seeing him.

When she was little Hinata was convinced that Naruto had some kind of superpowers. It wasn't that he could lift heavy things or fly but he had the ability to lighten up the room with only his presence. Because he was golden and warm and anything bright, it was easy to be happy when being around him. His smiles were wide and seldom missing.  
She had looked at him with big eyes and thought to herself that she should stay by his side as long as she could.

When she opened the door to a smiling Naruto the sun was shining right behind him. It blended her and she had to squint her eyes a little but under the hand, she was holding up to block the sun she noted how his expression somewhat changed when he saw that it was her who had opened the door. There was a shift of his gaze and something about the corners of his mouth. Hinata found how pleasant it felt that there was a certain smile and gaze Naruto only gave her. As if there was a hidden part of him that only belonged to her.

"What are you doing just standing there?" Hanabi had appeared next to Hinata, eyeing them with a raised brow. They had stared at each other without realizing it.  
Hanabi clasped her hands behind her back and turned toward Naruto with a wide grin. "Do you have it?"

Naruto's gaze lingered on Hinata's face for just a moment longer before he laughed and handed Hanabi the cake box which Hinata hadn't even noticed he was carrying with him. "When have I ever forgotten?"

"Yes!" Hanabi accepted the box eagerly, jumping from one foot to the other and trying to peek through the slits at the corners to see what kind of cake Naruto had brought her. "I love it when you come to our house."

Naruto stepped inside and began removing his shoes, laughing while doing so. He waved at Neji emerging from the other end of the corridor, who waved back before he disappeared into the dining room. You could hear his friends greeting him with exaggerated exclamations, shouting how hard it was to see his face now and that they were honored to be granted with his presence.

Hanabi was about to turn around, tightly holding onto her cake, when Hinata stopped her with a sharp spin of her head. "Don't you want to thank him?"

Hanabi scrunched up her nose and shook her head. "Me and him. We have a deal. You don't need to understand, big sister." With that she turned around, flipping her ponytail in her spin and skipping towards the kitchen.

"This deal seems hardly fair," Hinata said, "you don't get anything from it."

Naruto rose next to her, shouldering his backpack again. "I wouldn't say that. She is happy, that's enough."

Upon hearing words as gentle as that Hinata couldn't help but gape at him and when his lips stretched into a smile again she felt something like a jab in her chest. Something that felt aching and pleasing at the same time. He wanted to say something else but she quickly turned away and led him into the dining room. "The others are here already."

The tall table was plastered with books and notebooks and glasses of juice, only a few little spaces of the wooden surface left visible in between. Sakura and Ino were discussing something that didn't have anything to do with schoolwork, Kiba was scratching his head with his pencil, stopping only shortly to greet him and Shikamaru and Shino both welcomed him in the sluggish way they always expressed themselves with.

Neji, who was sitting with his back towards him, was busy typing something into the flip phone he wasn't ready to give up yet and only raised his hand in greeting. Naruto settled his backpack on the chair next to him and started unpacking his books. He sighed as he viewed the table, the sole appearance of schoolwork was enough to make his stomach churn. He didn't want to spend this day studying.

His eyes glanced at Hinata across from him. Her blue colored pen, which she used since seventh grade, was caught between the pages of a thick book she opened and then closed again. She stood up and said that she would get something for him to drink.

With only his schoolwork left to attend to, Naruto's eyes wandered to Neji's phone. "Who is Tenten?" he asked as he read the first line of a message he was typing.

Neji's head spun fast enough for it to hurt and he glared at him in a way that made Naruto take a step away.

"His girlfriend of course." Kiba declared from the other side of the table and lifted his pencil into the air. Neji just growled and flipped his phone shut.

"You have a girlfriend?" Ino's head rose, obviously interested in the story.

"No," Neji answered.

"Yes," came Kiba's immediate reply, he pointed his pencil at Neji in an accessional manner. "But he is keeping her a secret."

"I'm not discussing this with you again," Neji said, grabbing a nearby book and opening it.

"Again?" Sakura laughed.

"How often have you discussed this with him?" Shikamaru asked, crossing his arms behind his head as he smirked.

Kiba folded his hand under his chin, his pencil dangling between his fingers. "Often enough for me to know she exists. The Secret Girlfriend."

The discussion Naruto had accidentally started continued with him getting nudged if he had coincidentally seen what Neji had been typing and with Neji throwing deathly glares at him. When Naruto unnoticeably stood up from his chair and left the room, he could hear Neji proclaim "She is not my girlfriend!"

Naruto saw Hanabi striding out of the kitchen, the cheesecake he had brought her on a plate she held high above her head like a prize she had won. She grinned at him before she ascended the stairs to her room.

Naruto peeked into the kitchen and found Hinata cramming the now empty cake box into the trash bin.

"Need help?" He knew that she didn't need his help. She wasn't even doing anything that acquired help. But he couldn't think of anything else to announce his presence with.

Hinata jumped a little, upon suddenly seeing him in front of her and unconsciously grabbed a dishcloth, which she began to fumble with.

"Yeah, I just wanted to pour you some juice," she replied, which wasn't an answer to his question.

She quickly folded the dishcloth and left it on the counter, took a glass out of one of the cupboards and then moved to the fridge.

"Before that-" Naruto took the hand she had stretched to open the fridge and lightly pulled at her to turn his way, "there is something else."

Naruto looked at her as if he was embarrassed about taking her hand but he didn't let go of her.

"That thing on Saturday. The summer fair," he began slowly. Hinata looked up at him but his gaze was so intense that she had to look away at times. "When I asked you to go there with me, I asked you for a date."

Her eyes widened. Hinata could feel his hand squeezing hers and pulling at it a little more.

"It's a date," he repeated and Hinata was sure that her heart would have jumped out of her chest if her ribcage wasn't preventing it from doing so.

With Naruto and Hinata it had been like they had danced around the same topic for a while like they were standing at the threshold to a place where they would be more than friends. Often they could sense it, that the feelings of affection were mutual but no one said it out loud. Instead, they silently relished in the quiet moments they had, always questioning in the back of the head when their moments would stop being quiet and become loud instead.

Right now, Naruto was holding her hand and asking her to step over the threshold with him, to the other side.

"I know," Hinata said.

 **24 years old**

Countless lanterns hung from the high ceiling of the wedding hall, their white light wrapping the darkened room in a veil of warmth. At times they hung far up in the air, at times low enough to give the impression they could be touched if you just stretched your arm far enough.

The row of tall windows was embraced by heavy curtains and showed a view of the winter evening, shadows of trees and bushes moving silently in the wind.

The round tables dressed in white tablecloths, were decorated modestly, only small bouquets of flowers adorning the middle with tableware around that sparkled in the glow of the lanterns like they all had little flames of their own flickering in them.

Hinata looked up and stared at the drops of light above her; that kind of stare where your eyes lost focus and your mind went nowhere. Her environment lost shape and the lanterns became illuminated dots in her view. The people and their conversations went mute for a few moments, in which Hinata didn't feel like she was really there.

Sakura jabbed her in the side and marveled at how gorgeous the room was. Hinata agreed with a reluctant nod of her head. It really was gorgeous. She had helped Neji and Tenten with the organization of the wedding and the hall in the 'Konoha Hotel' but imagining things and actually seeing them before you were two completely different things.

Suddenly Ino exclaimed on her other side, her eyes fixated on the cellphone in her hand. "Sai's here somewhere."

She moved to hug her two friends, her arms wrapping halfheartedly around them. She smelled sweet and flowery like she always did as she worked as an aromatherapist and was never able completely to get rid of the scents on her hands.

"See you guys later," she sang and walked back to leave the hall again, in a way that made it seem like they wouldn't see her again anytime soon.

Sakura sighed as they watched her vanish. "Let's find our seats."

Hinata nodded and followed her among tables and guests, pressing the coat in her hands closer to her body.

"Where does your family sit?" Sakura asked, without turning around. Hinata pointed at a table near the dance floor that was the closest to the seats that had been prepared for the bridal couple.

On the stage, a band of men clothed in suits played a mellow song that she didn't know. "Sit with me for a while until the others arrive."

"Yeah, sure." They had found the table, that was reserved for their group of friends, the paper nameplates determining where everyone were to sit. Hinata remembered Tenten mumbling to herself a few weeks prior as to why she would need to assign all of them a place when they were just going sit however they want anyway.

Hinata watched her father talk to his brother, who, thanks to the wedding of his son, was beaming in a way unknown to her as they walked around their table to find their seats.

Sakura was engaged with her phone for a while before she followed Hinata's gaze directed towards her family.

"Where is Hanabi?"

Hanabi's white coat was draped over one of the chairs but there was no sign of her amongst her family members.

"Sneaking around somewhere with her boyfriend I guess. She said she had invited him too." Hinata looked at Sakura then, her fingers moving along the edge of Kiba's name tag, which had been placed neatly on the plate in front of her.

"She too?" Sakura chuckled, one of her arms leisurely placed over the back of her chair. "Since when does she have a boyfriend?"

"A few months now. She met him in one of her courses in university." Hinata leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. "His name is Konohamaru. My father wasn't happy when he showed up in front of our house out of the blue a few weeks ago to pick Hanabi up."

Sakura's eyes scanned the hall in hope to somehow sight the young couple.

"But you know Hanabi. She doesn't really care if she gets scolded. She marches to the beat of her own drum," Hinata said, with a tone of adoration in her voice.

"I can't believe she is already this old. I still remember her running around in the living when she got her new uniform for middle school."

Hinata smiled remembering her little sister jumping on the sofa, her new skirt and the red bow around her neck fluttering in her ecstatic movements. "Yeah."

The slow music stopped for a moment, in which the room seemed fuller with life. Hinata watched the band members adjusting the straps of the guitars around their shoulders and the man on the keyboard stretching his arms in his suit before he replaced his hands on the instrument to begin playing the next song.

 **17 years old**

Hinata regarded her face in the mirror, eyeing the lipstick she had just applied on her lips, she shook her head. She wiped the color away with the back of her hand.

Tilting her head, she viewed her now reddened mouth for a moment before she tried to reapply the lipstick more sparsely.

 _"It's a date."_

Naruto's voice echoed in her head and she softly repeated the phrase. She could mirror the smile forming on her lips and the hotness of her cheeks, which she tried to tame with covering them with her hands.

Anything she attempted to do with her hair seemed particularly wrong today so she let them fall loosely over her shoulders. But no amount of brushing made them soft enough and fall exactly the way she wanted them to.

"You're looking nice, big sister." Hanabi emerged, leaning against the door, and eyed Hinata from head to toe with the grin she reserved solely for the purpose of teasing her. "This is finally happening."

"What do you mean?"

"You guys going out, I mean." Hanabi began nibbling on the skin around the nail of her thumb. "It was bound to happen one day. Everybody was just waiting for it."

Embarrassed, Hinata avoided her little sister's gaze. Her words kindled a new surge of anxiousness in her. She didn't want everybody to wait for it when she herself wasn't even sure what to think or expect. But she had adopted the philosophy of accepting whatever it was, that was coming her way.

She knew how being in love was supposed to feel like; she had seen enough movies and heard enough stories to know. But with Naruto, it wasn't just loud heart thumping or sweaty hands or blushing but also comfort and goosebumps and the feeling of warmth. Because he had never been only a crush or her first love but first and foremost her best friend.

Hanabi beheld Hinata's silence and fidgeting on her stool as a sign to move on to something else.

"When are you leaving?"

"He's coming to pick me up." Hinata put her hairbrush back on the vanity and craned to see the clock hanging above her desk. "In about an hour."

Hinata realized that she didn't have anything else to do in that time. She had started early to get ready, fearing she might be late but now everything she had needed to do was done and she was too giddy to do anything else.

So she regarded herself in her mirror for the dozenth time, checked if the color of the shoes she had set aside really did match to the color of her dress and calculated how much cleaning up she could do in her room before Naruto was here to pick her up. In the end, she decided to leave her room and hover around in the living room instead.

Sitting on the sofa closest to the window to see the street outside and clutching her cellphone tight enough to make her fingers hurt, Hinata tried to distract herself by watching tv. But there was nothing on air that caught her interest and the clock in the corner of the program ran so slowly that she heard herself groan from time to time.

Her father was at work, despite it being Saturday and Neji, who was staying with them during his summer break, was out. For some reason, the empty house made the waiting even worse.

Sometimes Hanabi's figure showed up in the entrance of the living room but almost always vanished again when Hinata turned her head towards her.

When the appointed time arrived, Hinata sat up, side glancing the street outside and ready to rush to the front door. But more and more minutes passed until Naruto was already half an hour late. She calmed herself with the fact that he wasn't a particularly punctual person, in fact, he was usually late. But he had seemed so excited for this day, that she couldn't imagine him being late, she had actually expected him to arrive too early.

She was impatiently walking around the first floor when another thirty minutes passed and she couldn't reach his cell or anyone at his house.

Hanabi had come down, standing in the middle of the hallway. Her eyes followed her sister walking from one room to another, after making light jokes about the situation hadn't eased her.

When it was two hours past their meeting time Hinata came to a stop. Wordlessly she turned around, snatched her shoes from the cupboard by the front door and put them on.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to his house," Hinata declared, her hands moving to the next shoe. "I feel weird." Her fingers halted for a moment as the odd sensation in her stomach became oddly omnipresent when she announced her doubt out loud.

"I feel like..." Hinata straightened herself again but stopped talking even when Hanabi looked at her, waiting for her to continue. _Something is wrong._

"I'll just go and see if everything is alright." Her hand was already in the motion of opening the door when Hanabi called after her.

"What if he comes here?"

"Then tell him to wait for me." With those words, she shut the door behind her and rushed to the nearest bus station.

The moment she sat down in the bus she rather wished she had walked. She might be faster on the bus but with the motion of walking, she would feel like she was hurrying and give herself the impression of a quick journey. Sitting still on the other side was agonizing and she cursed at every red light stopping the vehicle on its way and at every passenger deciding to leave or step into this bus.

She didn't feel good, she didn't feel good at all. When the bus stopped at her destination and she accidentally pushed a man in her rush to get outside, she couldn't even bring herself to say that she was sorry, regardless of him shouting out after her.

The dryness of her throat from her run made every breath she took sting when she stood in front of Naruto's house, one of her hands held against her hips.

She noted that Minato's car wasn't parked where it usually was but Kushina's was, so Hinata rang the bell with the hope of her being home at least. She pushed again and again but no one opened the door. It was like a kick in her stomach every second nothing happened.

What should she do now? Go home? Or wait here? Maybe go to the bakery?

She was turning at her spot when her phone started ringing. It was the same default ringtone she hadn't changed in the whole time this cell phone had been in her possession but only now did the tone make her shiver.

Neji's name was on the display and her heart sank that it wasn't Naruto's.  
She watched the phone ring for a few moments, as if the name on the display could change when she just waited long enough. "Yeah?"

"Hinata, where are you right now?" The unusually strained voice of her cousin alarmed her.

"In front of Naruto's house, why?" She was scared to ask really. The only thing she wanted was seeing Naruto.

"Okay. Wait there for me, I'm coming to get you."

"What?" She could hear rustling on the other side of the line and it made her even more nervous, that she started to pace around Naruto's front yard. "But I'm supposed to meet Naruto."

"Naruto won't come." Any sound on Neji's side of the line went mute as if he regretted saying what he had just said. "Wait there, I'm on my way."

"What do you mean, he won't come? What happened?" She was beginning to feel irritated, she wanted to scream.

"I really don't think I should tell you this over the phone." The tension had disappeared from Neji's voice and it was calm again, with a melody that should lull her into doing what he wanted her to do.

"What happened? Tell me."

In the seconds in which Neji didn't say anything, Hinata could hear him breathing. "Naruto is at the hospital right now."

"What?! Why? Was he injured?"

"No, he is fine. It's his parents." Neji's voice started to show signs of distress again. "Apparently there was a fire in the bakery and when Naruto's parents rushed to get there, they had a car accident."

Her legs were feeling wobbly and Hinata kneed down, she took long and slow breaths to compose herself. "But they are going to be fine, right?"

After the seconds of silence, there was no need for her cousin to answer anymore. She already knew when he didn't respond right away. "No." Her chest hurt. "No, Hinata, they... they both passed away."

She then was somewhere else; not huddling on the sidewalk next to Kushina's car, not with the phone still pressed against her ear, the voice of her cousin ringing in her ears. Somewhere where breathing was hard and where it was ice-cold in the heat of summer.

"Hinata, are you listening? Don't go anywhere, okay? I'll be there in a few minutes." Neji's voice was gone.

She didn't hang up, only let her hand with the phone fall to the ground. Her legs had started to ache because of her position but she didn't have the energy to stand up again.

Hinata lifted her chin from the space between her knees and looked up at the blue, cloudless sky and then she started crying.

* * *

It was hot. Unbearably and breathtakingly hot. Her blouse felt sticky and her hands were covered in sweat. But she rather stood in the blazing sun than go inside.

The whole day she had felt a weight pushing her down with a strength she was barely able to walk. But compared to that, how much worse would Naruto be feeling?

It was so odd that the last time she had seen him, he was waving at her and calling his goodbyes over the fence around her front yard, his eyes glistening the way they always did when he smiled.

What was a friend supposed to do in this situation? What was anyone supposed to do in this situation?

Her father had said something about being there for him but how exactly would she manage to do that? It was such a vague piece of advice that she rather had him said nothing.

Because she was here. She was here at the wake of the parents of her best friend and she really didn't want to be.

Her father looked back at her, one of his hands holding Hanabi's. He gave Hinata an understanding smile and stayed there until she was ready to follow. Neji was standing silently by Hinata's side. He had been following her like a shadow all day.

People clothed in black passed them with heads bowed down and hands folded in front of them.

Hinata took a deep breath and caught up to her father, her arm twitching to grab his.

The cold air inside made her shiver, and she could feel the places of her clothes which were wet from her sweat.

Hiashi walked to the ledge to sign their names, Hanabi right by his side, her hair up in a knot for probably the first time in her life. Her hair and her bloodshot eyes made her look older than she really was.

Together, the family walked inside the room of people, sitting on the ground at long tables that nearly stretched from one wall to the other. They exchanged words in muffled voices and occasionally took a sip of their drinks. All of them raised their heads to greet the newcomers before they continued.

Hinata now saw the separate room at the end of the last table. She swallowed hard when she saw the flower arrangements around the two framed pictures of the deceased. She could feel the lump in her throat again. Thick and unyielding.

Naruto's godfather, Jiraiya, was standing right next to it. His hair was as white as the first day she had seen him when he had abruptly burst through the door of the bakery and threw little Naruto in the air. He lived on the other side of the country but occasionally appeared in the bakery or Naruto's house without any prior announcement. She had never seen him without a grin on his face. Until today she hadn't.

He saw Hinata and her family and nodded. She bowed her head because she didn't know what else to do. She had never been formal with him.

The family paid their respect, Hinata glancing at her father to make sure she did exactly what he did and Hanabi glancing at Hinata to do the same. They placed a white flower by the pictures, which Hinata avoided to look at. They again exchanged bows with Jiraiya and as they walked to the room with the others, he lightly stroked Hinata's head.

When looking around the room to decide where to sit, Hinata searched for Naruto, her eyes darting from one table to the other. Even when she was still not sure how to act when she crossed paths with him again, not seeing him here was worse than her worry of that.

She looked back into the room where Jiraiya was now kneeling on the ground before she distanced herself from her family until she left the common room unnoticed.

There was an aura about this place that made her shudder and the little hairs on her neck rise. When she stepped into the hallway she halted for a moment to orientate herself in this building that aroused a feeling of tenseness in her. It was scary how something built from stone could scare her in such a way.

She had no idea where to look for Naruto, so she walked aimlessly around the hallways and took random turns. She didn't even know whether he was inside or outside.

Hinata was mumbling to herself that she should have asked Jiraiya before she had gone on her search but her voice died in her throat when she saw Naruto sitting on the ground of a corridor that seemed like a dead end. Like he would have tried to go further if there hadn't been a blockade in his way. Like he had tried to find the place furthest from the decorated pictures of his parents.

Naruto's back was leaned against the wall and his head was turned away from her sight. He was looking in the direction of a large painting hanging on the wall at the end of the hallway. It was an image of a blooming garden; colorful flowers sprouting from the corners, green twining around a wooden shed.

Hinata broke her eyes away from the painting and its sublimely ornate frame to let them fall on Naruto's figure crouched against the wall. He had his legs pulled in and his arms laid inanimately on the stone ground.

Her eyes burned and she blinked away the tears that were forming in her eyes yet again. She took a deep, shaky breath and slowly walked to him.

All day she had been wondering what to say at exact this moment but right now she got rid of her thoughts and her body moved on its own. When she stood above him she could eventually see the redness of his eyes and that his bottom lip was bruised because he was biting it too hard.

Hinata gave him time to react or tell her to go away if that was what he wanted, but he didn't say anything or gave any indication of acknowledging her presence.

Then she sat down next to him, smoothing down her skirt when she stretched out her legs.

Her shoulder brushed his and he flinched just slightly when he felt her hand on his. She took his hand and pulled it to her lap, resting it there and squeezing it between both her hands.

She didn't say anything because there wasn't anything she could say. There were no words in existence that would give him comfort or reassurance. And that was probably what her father had meant by being there for him; being by his side despite the awareness that the sadness wouldn't go away.

They sat like this for what felt like hours. Naruto wasn't staring at the painting anymore but had his eyes fixed on a point ahead of him and Hinata did the same.

At times she sensed his hand moving against hers. She felt waves of sadness inside of her but she suppressed the shaking of her body and the wetting of her eyes.

Their friends arrived one after another. First, there was Neji, who silently walked past them and sat on Naruto's other side. Then Sakura appeared, then Kiba and Shino, patting Naruto's shoulder before they sat down in front of him. A while later Ino showed up, trying to sniffle as quietly as possible before she sat down and then Shikamaru, who filled up the little space that was left in Naruto's circle.

As if they had all agreed on this beforehand, each and every one of them knew what to do. No one said anything.

* * *

His face throbbed and the bruises on his knuckles were still bleeding. It burned when he touched the wounds on his hand with his thumb.

The boy sitting in the chair next to him looked worse than he did and for a moment Naruto was proud of that observation. But then that moment passed and he felt the shame of sitting in the police station because of a fight that could have easily been prevented.

The boy next to him growled, what Naruto tried to ignore as best as he could while he watched the female officer behind the desk typing something into the computer. Sometimes she looked up at them, glanced over their attires and asked questions but then she continued typing, what felt like too much for a case as trivial as this.

He looked around the different desks with police officers vigorously asking questions to their 'criminals', who looked down to the ground or fumbled with their handcuffs or responded with annoyed groans. He studied them and wondered what they had done to be sitting here together with him when he saw Jiraiya coming through the entrance.

Jiraiya's eyes found Naruto the immediate moment he stepped into the room and Naruto looked away as if he hadn't noticed him. But had noticed him, him and also Hinata, who was walking behind the tall stature of his godfather. Even though they both looked worried, Naruto was furious. He didn't want them to be here. He didn't want to see anyone or explain anything.

Jiraiya introduces himself to the female officer, whose demeanor seemed to harden. He turned to Naruto and asked whether he was alright, Naruto nodded, still not looking him in the eye.

Hinata had positioned herself next to him and gazed over his black eye and chapped lip. She contorted her face as though she could feel the pain of his wounds.

"Why are you here?" Naruto asked in a rough voice and Hinata recognized the tone which made it clear that he didn't want her to be here.

"I was on the way to your place-", she began quietly.

"She was outside the house when I rushed out to come and get you." There was something else in Jiraiya's way of speaking that didn't sound like worry but Naruto couldn't identify what it was.

At that moment a man and a woman burst in and hurried to their side, fussing around the boy next to him, who was still holding a cloth against his lips, which he was sure, he only did to parade that he was hurt.

The parents switched to and fro between talking to the officer and throwing angered glances at Naruto.

But as Naruto watched them fussing around their son, he felt his throat tighten. He looked at his godfather signing some papers and then back at the boy wailing to his mother.

Naruto slowly blinked with the realization that he didn't want Jiraiya and Hinata to be here because they weren't the first people supposed to come in this type of situations. His parents should have walked through that door. His mother should have scolded him with a pat on the back of his head and his father should have mended the fences between the different parties involved.

All three of them were completely silent on their way to the car. Jiraiya's loud sigh was the first this to break the stillness before he turned on the engine.

Hinata sat in the back together with Naruto and looked back and forth between him and his godfather. She thought to herself that she shouldn't have gotten into the car when Jiraiya had said that he was on the way to the police station. She felt like an intruder and therefore decided to say nothing for the whole ride.

After a while, Jiraiya started something that wasn't quite a lecture. He had to consider the circumstances but he didn't want to let this visit to the police station slide.

Naruto grumbled in response and didn't even look like he was listening to what was said. Hinata became even more unsure about being in the car with them. She could sense both of them getting agitated with the other.

When they stopped at a red light, Jiraiya turned around to look back at Naruto. "You can't just punch people."

"I didn't just punch him." Naruto leaned forward to him. "He started it."

"With pushing you?"

"Yes!" he exclaimed as if he couldn't understand why that wouldn't be a legitimate reason to throw a punch at someone. "Why are you acting like this anyway, you're not my father."

The car fell dead silent. Naruto's chest rose and fell quickly like it would after running for quite a distance. There was a glint in his eyes that faded the longer he looked at Jiraiya.

"Naruto..." Hinata whispered, she really wanted to hold his hand.

"Just forget it," Naruto mumbled and briskly left the car, slamming the door shut before he walked away. Jiraiya's hand was already on the handle of his own door and he was calling after him despite the windows being closed but the cars behind them started honking because the light had turned green.

"You go after him." Hinata jerked in astonishment of suddenly being addressed. "There is no place for me to park the car."

She nodded and quickly murmured something about giving him a call before leaving the car as well and running in the direction Naruto had disappeared to.

Luckily his blond hair was easy to spot but he was walking in a tempo that was hard to catch up to without colliding with other pedestrians.

When he turned around the next corner and crossed the street after, she knew where he was going. Without realizing, her pace slowed down.

Dark clouds had covered the sun and put the street in a bleak shadow. In the distance, Hinata could see Naruto standing in front of the bakery, obviously indecisive whether to go inside or not.

But then he ripped off the striped plastic tape by the entrance and walked in and Hinata wondered if she should really follow him.

Some of the people on the street had tailed Naruto with their eyes, aware that his parents had died a few weeks ago and that it was the first time he was back at the shop where he had nearly spend every day at.

The old lady from the bookstore had stepped out of her shop and gave Hinata a sympathetic smile. She had seen her at the funeral.

Hinata bowed her head and continued her walk but stopped again when she was standing in front of the bakery.

The glass of the front door had needed to be broken to get to the fire in the kitchen and the glass sharps were still laying all around the entrance. With a dwelling hint of doubt inside her, she climbed the few steps and walked inside, the glass crunching beneath her shoes.

In spite of the noises she was making, Naruto's remained with his back turned to her. His shoulders hung down and he stood there in the middle of the shop as if he had suddenly lost the ability to move.

Blue garlands and paper flowers from the ceiling had fallen to the ground, which was clustered with the dirty remains foreign footsteps.

Some tables had been knocked over, their little vases shattered on the floor, together with the frames that had fallen from the walls. Hinata saw a dried up sunflower squashed under the leg of a overturned chair.

The doorframe by the entrance to the kitchen had blackened from the fire, its dark color creeping on the ceiling like a shadow. The shop still smelled like ash and something chemical.

Naruto reached for one of the chairs closest to him and put it up again. His hand remained on the back of the chair and he stared at the piece of furniture in wonderment.

In something that didn't even seem like a second he lifted it into the air and threw the chair over the counter and against the wall, the wood splitting noisily before it fell to the ground.

Hinata had gasped in surprise and embraced her upper body with her arms.

"It's not fair." Naruto was shaking visibly as he grabbed another chair and threw it in the same direction. "They spend their whole life at this damn place and it just decides to burn down."

"This makes no sense." He took the frame with his father's diploma from baking school, one of the few which had survived hanging on the wall, and tossed it across the room as well.

"Naruto." He was getting angrier by the second and Hinata timidly tried to close in on him while keeping her own emotions of seeing him like this at bay.

Naruto now reached for one of the tables but it was hard to lift with only one arm and he paused for a while as though he was surprised by this fact before he used his other arm as well.

Hinata pushed the furniture to the ground again as she neared in to get a hold of his wrists. "Stop it, you're going to hurt yourself."

They both struggled for a bit before the table fell back into the broken remains of a vase.

The hands around his wrists tightened and Naruto's head dropped, as he shook it. "This makes no sense, Hinata."

Hinata enclosed his head with both her hands, guiding him to lift his eyes from the ground and look at her. It was the first time today, that he was looking into her eyes, maybe the first time in days.

"It's not fair... them not being here," he said, his voice throaty and broken.

Missing them came to him like waves. The water retreated for a while but then it crashed against his shores again and he felt like crumbling under the force. Right now he was breathless.

He regretted complaining about the scratchy pullovers his mother had bought for him every winter and never wearing them, he regretted declining every offer of playing ball his father had made, he regretted getting angry at them when they had scolded him, he regretted not eating his vegetables, he regretted getting bad grades. He thought of times he was unhappy with them and felt like someone was reaching through his chest and crushing his heart in a fist.

Hinata sensed that her cheeks were wet, she wasn't sure when she had started crying. Her gaze traveled from his eyes to his lips, which were quivering and waiting for him to burst.

She sighed and sniffled, her fingers still stroking his cheeks as he looked at her in a plea to make him feel better. So her hands embraced him firmer and she tiptoed until she could press her lips against his.

She pushed so firmly against him as if she wanted to leave an imprint on him. She could feel his lips still trembling and where they were chapped and she was definitely hurting him at that spot with her force.

When she pulled away after a while, his lips weren't pressed together anymore in a desperate attempt to stop himself from weeping and he had finally let himself tear up. She watched how quickly his eyes glazed over and tears started falling from its corners. He started sobbing and Hinata hugged him.

Naruto clung at her as if he was drowning in the sea and she was the only thing that could pull him out of the water. His face was pressed against her shoulder and his arms entwined around her body, drawing her to himself as closely as he could.

Hinata stroked his back in a gesture to soothe him yet it made him cry even louder. And she cried with him. Together they stood in the shattered remnants of their special place.

 **24 years old**

The hall was filled with laughter and music, and applause erupted when the grand wedding cake was rolled in. Hinata broke her attention away from Iruka, the headmaster of her school, to watch the cake carefully being placed close to the table of the bridal couple. It was layered high enough for her to be unable to see the top.

"I've always wondered, how they manage to make the cakes so big," Iruka said, with a smile on his face. Hinata broke away from the dessert and smiled back at him. She knew how they were made.

She hadn't expected her boss to attend the wedding of his former student. They both hadn't been able to keep themselves from talking about school for a while even when they had enough time to do that on Monday when they would see each other again.

Iruka's phone on the table began buzzing and he excused himself. "I have to take this," he said and left her alone at the table. She watched him until he completely vanished from her sight before she stood up and walked back to her own seat.

She glanced at the table with her friends, where Kiba was wildly gesturing as he talked and Ino was holding hands with her boyfriend and Sakura was laughing about something Kiba had said. She thought about joining them when she caught a glimpse of Neji and Tenten talking to someone, who had his back turned to her.

Hinata smiled seeing them so happy. Tenten was grinning and had slung an arm around her husband's, she jumped lightly and Neji laughed.

Their happiness seemed out of this world. Something she wouldn't understand just by watching them closely. It was their own happiness; the way they were happy together. It wasn't possible to understand something that wasn't meant for her.

She frowned when Tenten started vigorously searching the room, unconsciously Hinata looked around too. Tenten's eyes fell on her and she lifted a hand to point at her, saying something to Neji.

Neji found Hinata too and Tenten gestured her to come to them. But before Hinata could make a step she stiffened when the person they were talking to turned around.

It was like slow motion, like a scene out of a movie when suddenly the person who was looking at her was Naruto. The Naruto who, the last time she had seen him, was staring at her from the passenger seat of Jiraiya's car as they turned around the next corner. Leaving her on the edge of the sidewalk by his old house, sorrowfully looking after them.

For some odd reason, the first thing she noticed about him was that she could see his forehead because his hair was shorter. Her gaze wandered and stopped at his eyes. He was looking at her with the same surprised expression she was giving him.  
Her breath hitched and she could hear her heart thumping in her ears.

* * *

Three chapters down, three more to go!  
Please comment and tell me what you think about this chapter. Nothing motivates a fanfiction writer to write more than receiving feedback from readers.


	4. Chapter 4

Her hand was already in the slot of the mailbox when she retreated it again. Ruefully she looked at the blue colored envelope which she couldn't part with.

The rain fell soundlessly against her umbrella. It was that type of weightless rain that floated in the air like dust and seemed to be everywhere but on the ground.

Yet, the small droplets were enough to wet the ink of Naruto's name, thickening the letters.

Hinata stared at the envelope. She imagined what Naruto would be doing right now. Somehow, those imaginations of him were always soundless, like in some kind of dream. She could see him talking and laughing but she couldn't hear it.

Maybe he had found time to bake, his gaze continuously switching from his messy sketchbook to the table with the utensils he would use. Far away, in his own world, maybe he was content right now, smiling at his creation or finding someone to taste whatever he had made.

Or maybe he was together with some friends right now? She wouldn't know how they looked like so she only saw blank faces that surrounded him, attracted to the light that was Naruto.

She pressed the envelope against her chest and sighed. She could nearly feel it through her jacket and on her skin. A piece of writing shouldn't have this much power.

The air smelled like fall; like moist earth and dried up leaves, like something faintly sweet in the distance. She sensed a dampness on her legs that wasn't even there and a cold shiver on her back.

Hinata shook her head and put the letter back into her bag, feeling its weight when she shouldered it and pressed it against her body. Then she walked away from the mailbox.

 **24 years old**

His shoulders were wider and he was taller, so much taller than her now. The closer she walked up to him the more aware she became of that. The physical proof that he had become an adult astonished her for some reason.

He tried to smile at her, appear somehow at ease but he could feel his mouth stiffen. Suddenly he became oddly conscious of his hands and where he should put them.

Even though he had been aware that he would see her when he came here, even though he had planned gazes and poses and dialogues for the moment he would be face to face with her again, none of it seemed to have ever existed the moment she walked up to him.

She was beautiful, her hair falling just over one of her shoulders and her face sparkling the way women's faces somehow always seemed to do. He couldn't remember ever seeing her in a dress as fancy as the one she was wearing.

She looked up at him beneath hooded lashes, not yet daring to face him completely. Her lips were pressed together and he wished for her to smile at him.

"Hey," he said almost breathlessly and regretted the greeting the moment it had rolled over his lips. Something so short and meaningless didn't feel like it was enough for this moment. Hinata deserved something that was meaning and yearning and elation. But was there even a phrase out there that would suffice?

She looked at him in an astonished manner as if she still couldn't make any sense of him suddenly being in front of her. She then greeted him the same.

They felt the bridal couple's expectant eyes on them as they fell into a short yet heavy silence.

"What are you doing here?" Hinata's question sounded harsher than she had intended it to be but Naruto didn't seem to take it negatively. Instead, he smiled at her when he answered and there was this fleeting moment where the gaze in his eyes became soft as he examined her face.

"I'm moving back here."

He said more after that. She could see his lips moving, explaining to them that he had thought about it for a while. She could see him turning his head between the three that were present but also lingering at her while he talked, waiting for a certain reaction but she couldn't hear anything further he explained.

There was a buzz in her head that made everything else fade into silence and that one sentence swirled around in her mind like a carousel. _I'm moving back here._

Tenten rejoiced in a little jump and told Naruto that she had heard quite a lot about him and was happy to finally get to know him, while Neji regarded his cousin and brushed Hinata's arm.

"So, you're staying here for good?" Hinata asked.

"Well, yes. That's the plan," he replied almost as if he had been caught off guard.

Hinata could feel a tickling in her hands and Naruto watched her move another step in his direction. There was something in the way they looked at each other that made electricity rush through their veins; something only meant for each other, a glint of past memories flashing in front of them.

"How did you know to come here?" Tenten asked. "Neji and I had no idea that you would be coming."

"Oh, it was a coincidence. I met Iruka a few months back and he asked whether I would be going to Neji's wedding." Naruto chuckled quietly on his own as it was still odd to hear that one of his childhood friends had gotten married.

Hinata's expression had fallen. "So you were here in town a few months ago?"

"Eh, yeah. I was." Naruto was caught even though he had tried to keep his motive for coming back hidden. This was not the way he had planned to tell her. Not while standing next to Neji and his new bride, who both watched them so expectantly; not while he had to raise his voice because the band had started to play again and they were too close to the stage; not while standing in this dim light that kept him from regarding her face as carefully as he intended to.

But Hinata was already frowning at him in this way that reminded him of the time when he hadn't waited for her after school because some of his classmates had crudely teased him about her being his girlfriend. The look of betrayal she had carried was far worse than any teasing he could imagine.

"Actually, I was-"

"Naruto!" A hand gave his shoulder a powerful swat. "Dude, is that really you?" Kiba grinned at him, his hand remaining on Naruto's arm and his face a little too close to his.

For a moment Naruto's eyes flashed over his old friend's face, with his canine teeth that were too pointy and his youthful grin, and realized how little had changed in his appearance. Naruto grinned back at him and they did a half-hug where they patted each other's backs loud enough to momentarily drown the music.

"No one told me you were coming." Kiba stepped away from him but stood close enough for their arms to brush as he swayed to the rhythm of the music.

"'Cause no one knew really." Naruto awkwardly scratched the back of his head.

"Geez, how long has it been since you left? Five? Six years?"

"It's been over seven years," came Hinata's voice and even though she had corrected Kiba's miscalculations she was looking at Naruto, who felt like something sharp was piercing through him.

"Right." Kiba laughed uneasily and Tenten joined him, trying to appease the tension that had emerged. "Time surely flies."

"You should meet the others too," Neji suggested. "We could get you a chair from somewhere so that you can join them." He was searching the hall, trying to see over the crowd that had accumulated in the middle of the dance floor.

"Thanks." All of sudden Naruto felt misplaced. He had already apologized that he wasn't dressed properly for the occasion even though he could have sworn that he had taken a suit with him to wear at the wedding. As he stood there, poorly attired in the only white shirt he could find, and looked at these people he hadn't seen in a very long time, he felt like making excuses for appearing without saying anything beforehand. "Don't worry, I'll find a place to sit."

A beat passed before Kiba grabbed him by the shoulder and ushered him to his table as Naruto continued to look back at Tenten, who snaked her arm around Neji's to pull him closer to her and say something into his ear, and at Hinata, who didn't follow them yet, stared at their figures disappearing from her view.

* * *

Naruto had been wandering around the hall when he found Neji sitting by himself at and empty table. He followed his gaze and discovered that he was watching his wife, which made Naruto smile.

"I can't believe you're married now." He lowered himself on the chair next to him and gave the groom a light jab into the side. Naruto too started to follow the movements of the bride, who seemed to glide over the parquet with such an ease that it made her look divine.

Neji chuckled and leant back in his seat, eyeing Naruto's profile now.

"Makes me realize again how much time really passed," Naruto mumbled in a melancholy tone. Neji noticed the hardening of his expression, only there for a moment, before he broke into a grin and turned toward him.

"Who would have known that I would be attending your wedding one day, considering how much you used to hate me."

Neji was aware that Naruto wanted to cast off the thought that had flashed before him just then and talk about something pleasant instead.

Neji wrinkled his nose and shook his head a little. "I didn't hate you."

"Come on, of course, you did." Naruto laughed. "Whenever you were at her place and I called Hinata out to play you tried to find some weird excuses to convince her to stay at home because you refused to do anything with me." He remembered Neji holding one of Hinata's arms to keep her from going out the front door telling her that she should play with Hanabi instead or that she had homework to do or that she had forgotten to water the plants. Naruto had arched a brow at him, holding onto her other arm.

Yet thanks to Naruto's persistent character those excuses rarely worked.

"Sometimes those were very legitimate reasons." Neji had his arms crossed over his chest, convinced that his nine-year-old self couldn't have been as ludicrous as Naruto painted him out to be.

"You even punched me once."

"But that was an accident so it doesn't count and you punched me right back."

The fight had involved a rather heated baseball game on a crisp afternoon in spring and a misunderstanding leading to a brawl, that Kiba and Shikamaru had to get in between of.

Naruto and Neji started laughing, those days seemed like a lifetime ago.

"After that, Hinata did everything she could to make us friends." For some reason, she had been convinced that they would become friends if they just began to do more things together. Naruto hadn't believed her back then but now he was sitting together with Neji on his wedding day.

Coincidentally both found Hinata talking together with Tenten at her table. And while the bride glanced at the men now and them, Hinata didn't.

"Yes, she can be quite stubborn," Neji said.

 **8 years old**

Naruto and Neji stared at each other as if they were in some kind of contest and the first one to look away would lose. They were sitting across from each other; Naruto on the sofa, which's leathery surface made noises whenever he moved and Neji in the big chair that seemed to swallow him with its massiveness.

The cartoon on the tv was left unattained after they had fought over what to watch. The voices of the characters on the screen were muffled by the rain hitting against the windows and the thunder in the distance yet no one wanted to be the one to move and use the remote.

In the corner of his eye, Naruto saw the glass of juice Hinata had brought him earlier and his mind was playing with the idea of taking a sip. But he didn't want to give Neji the satisfaction of winning this silent war they were having that no one, in particular, had declared.

He had sensed that something fishy was going on the moment Neji had opened the door for him. Hinata never really invited him to her place, they usually played at the bakery or outside when the weather was good.

But this time Hinata had been so adamant in inviting him over that there wouldn't have been a chance to decline.

Right now he wished he would have as Hinata had purposely left him alone with Neji. She continued to leave the room at one point even stopping to give them reasons why she would have to. It was obvious that she wanted them to talk and maybe bond over whatever was on tv.

She still hadn't returned from her last trip and he had to stay here at least until his parents picked him up after they closed the shop.

A sudden bolt of lightning illuminated the room in an eerie glow of blue and made both boys wince right before the thunder rolled and the room fell into complete darkness. Everything went silent as even their breaths hitched in their throats.

Naruto could see Neji's eyes slightly sparkling in the distance as he stood up from where he had been seated.

"What's going on?" Naruto asked, still holding onto the sofa with one hand like it was some kind of safe haven.

They heard footsteps in the hallway and Hiashi rushed into the room, trying to spot the children in the darkness.

"Don't worry, everything is going to be alright," he spoke with the calmness his voice commonly carried. "You three don't move and wait here together, I will see if I can get the power back."

He disappeared again into the darkness and mumbled something under his breath on his way out.

Naruto was so occupied with rediscovering the shapes and forms of the living room that he only now realized again that Hinata wasn't with them. He immediately called out for her but the only thing he could hear in response was Neji's breathing next to him.

"Let's go find her," Neji said in a low voice. "You stay behind me." He was already taking careful steps toward the exit of the room when Naruto exclaimed.

"Why do I have to walk behind you?" He grabbed his arm but bumped his shin against one leg of the coffee table. He drew in his breath through his teeth and rubbed the place on his leg that ached.

"That's the reason," Neji responded, calm as ever not caring whether his companion was in pain. "It's dark and I know this place better than you do. So follow me."

Naruto gave in after a long pause of grumbling. He followed Neji's shadow into the hallway, which was momentarily lighted up by another flash. They called Hinata's name into the abyss, their voices competing against the growling of thunder.

They searched one room after the other, their hands constantly wielding through the air, occasionally hitting each other. Naruto stumbled into several pieces of furniture and he was about to accuse Neji of purposely leading him into them when he heard a whimpering in the huge wardrobe soaring at the end of the hallway.

The piece of furniture was enormous enough for him to notice it when he stepped into the apartment, as he had wondered how someone could carry something so huge up the stairs.

"Wait," Naruto whispered and stepped in front of Neji. He closed in on the wardrobe that Neji knew only had one single coat of his uncle hanging in it.

"Hinata?" Naruto groped the surface of the wood to find the handles and open the wardrobe. He sensed Neji behind him when he opened its doors and the muffled whimpering became clearer.

"Hinata, are you alright?" Naruto found Hinata's foot, which jerked away the moment he touched it. The darkness was so much bleaker now that they were in the confines of furniture.

He heard Neji moving to Hinata's other side and scan the interior of the wardrobe. Naruto did the same and, after ensuring that there was enough room for him, sat down next to her. "Don't worry your dad is going to fix the lights," Naruto said in an encouraging voice and when his hand accidentally brushed against hers, he took a hold of it. She squeezed it when another bolt of lightning struck and made odd noises behind pressed lips.

"Are you afraid of the storm?" Neji asked, "Is that why you didn't come back again?"

Naruto's sight adjusted to his surroundings and he could make out how Hinata nodded her head, the back of it rubbing against the coat behind them.

"The storm got louder and I didn't want to bother you." Even though she was sitting next to him it seemed as if her shaky voice was somewhere far in the distance, which was the reason why he shifted closer to her.

Neji told her that being afraid was fine and that they would wait with her until the storm was over. Naruto felt her hand loosening in his but enclosed him firmly again whenever the storm made itself present.

"Storms aren't that bad," he began. "My mom once said that even when it looks like the clouds are fighting, they always make up in the end." He smiled at her despite the fact that she surely wouldn't be able to see it.

He continued with suggesting her to imagine the lightning and thunder being something else. That the lightning was just someone taking photos of her but that she couldn't care less because her stomach was growling so loudly, which was the thunder. He heard Neji laugh at that but not in a disapproving way.

A game started where both of them described places they could be instead right now; a time machine to meet a real dinosaur or a space ship to see the stars up close.

They giggled, one shoulder pressed to the other, not realizing the storm fading away slowly. And when the lights came on again their imaginary world dissolved in the air.

They remained seated and for a moment just didn't say anything and Naruto saw that Neji was holding Hinata's other hand.

 **24 years old**

"Somehow I feel like she isn't even happy to see me again," Naruto spoke quiet enough for Neji to question whether his words were meant for him to hear or rather kept for himself. His gaze remained fixed on Hinata, who was now sitting alone and eyeing her uneaten piece of the cake that was distributed earlier.

"That's impossible," Neji declared calm and sure of his words. "I still remember her making lists of the things she wanted to talk with you about and crying when she couldn't reach you on your birthday."

Naruto's eyes moved away from Hinata to his folded hands in his lap. He imagined piles of sticky notes with endless lists of topics to update him on life in Konoha, collected meticulously in a drawer of her desk because she was the type of person that kept those kinds of things.

Notes that told him that Kiba had managed to get into the police academy and worked as an officer now. That his dog, Akamaru, who had never liked Naruto very much but adored Hinata all the more, was old but still alive. That Shino was a professor of entomology at a university a little far from Konoha. That Sakura had graduated from medical school best of her class like she had dreamed when she was still in middle school. That Shikamaru was working an office job in government and even met his girlfriend there.

All these things he had only found out about today.

He imagined her covering herself under her blanket to cry since she used to hide whenever she was upset because he wouldn't celebrate his birthday after his parents had died. As she remembered that one time when they were ten and he told his parents that he was fine with them delaying his birthday for a week because them congratulating him was enough for him.

"Just give her some time to adjust," Neji added and brought him back from the blurred imaginations in his mind. The music changed into a melodic song with a slow beat and before the singer stroke the first tone, Tenten was standing in front of them and taking Neji's hand. She led him onto the dance floor when the streamers were dimmed and small lights with different colors washed over the crowd.

Hinata watched her cousin dancing together with Tenten, their figures only visible whenever they swayed between the other couples dancing slowly around them. She sighed and regarded her cake again, which she was starting to poke at with her fork.

Tenten had asked her earlier why she was being so weird around him and she had answered that she wasn't sure of what to do.

Right when Hinata lifted her gaze, she saw Naruto standing up from where he had sat and walked in her direction. He was looking right at her and her unsure of what it meant. Her heart was beating faster with the rush of an impending conversation with him. It wouldn't even have to be a conversation, just being near him would enough to make her skin tickle and her heart thud in her ears.

But when he had crossed half of the distance between them, her father stopped him from going further. She saw him smile at him and great him with a pat on his upper arm, probably telling him how tall he had grown to be.

Hinata took this opportunity her father had provided her and shuffled away from her table.

Naruto glanced at her distancing herself further and further. Hiashi told him that he was glad to hear that he would be moving back into town and Naruto tried to answer as good as the circumstances allowed him to. He saw Hinata disappearing in the crowd of couples, shades of blue and yellow dancing on her figure.

 _"I'm leaving." Hinata's head jerked up from the cup in her hands. She had sensed that something was going on when Naruto had asked her to take a walk together._

 _After his parents had died Hinata had given him the space he wanted. She had been undecided whether distance or closeness was the best support she could offer him, so she had let him decide._

 _They had proceeded their walk in silence, the warm breeze blowing into their faces as they passed the familiar streets at random. Naruto had asked whether she was thirsty and she had agreed him buying her something only so that she had something to do._

 _Whenever she had side eyed him, he appeared to be in deep thought, like he was assembling sentences in his mind. So she had waited and when he suggested that they sat down on the steps of a closed clothing store, she knew that all the thinking he had done until now was for this moment._

 _"What?" She stared at his profile as Naruto focused at a spot on the pavement._

 _"I'm going to move in with Jiraiya. You know, he lives a little far from here," he explained. It wasn't a little far, it was at the other side of the country._

 _She looked away. "How do you feel about that?" Her voice had become a whisper now. She could already feel her throat hurting._

 _"Fine," he said. "Actually, it was my idea."_

 _No matter how much she tried not to, Hinata disliked hearing that. For some reason it made her feel irrelevant in his equation of where to go from here._

 _"That's a good thing then." Later she would wonder how she had managed to say that. She was utterly devastated but the importance of Naruto's well-being had given her the strength she needed to smile at him. Genuinely. "When will you be leaving?"_

 _"Soon. So that I won't miss too many school days." His voice sounded hollow somehow. As if he had been completely emptied of everything he had carried inside of him. "I can't be here when they are not." This was the moment he looked up at her and she could see his eyes glazing over again. She didn't want to see him cry anymore and held his hand. She nodded, to show him that she understood and that it was okay._


	5. Chapter 5

**24 years old**

A deep sigh escaped his throat when he threw himself on the bed, the furniture creaking beneath him. The air in the room was stuffy but it was too cold outside to open a window.

Naruto laid there in the darkness, listening to his own breathing for a while and watching the ceiling light up whenever a car passed the hotel.

He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath before he rolled over to the head of the bed to switch on the lamp on the nightstand.

Even though the room was big enough for one person it felt cramped by the way he had messily spread out all the possessions he had brought with himself.

The clothes in his opened suitcase were no longer folded but thrown together into a pile. Some documents he had to look through earlier were spread out in the table. And a carton box with some valuable things he occasionally rummaged through was placed right in the middle of the room, which caused him to trip whenever he went to the bathroom.

For some reason, the only item he had taken care of properly was the shirt he had worn to Neji's wedding over a week ago, which he had neatly hung on the bathroom door after getting it dry cleaned in the hotel.

His legs ached from walking around all day and he sat up to massage them. Naruto's gaze fell on the framed picture on the nightstand. With all the traveling he did over the years, he always had this specific picture with him.

It showed his 14-year-old self with his parents' arms draped around his shoulders in Jiraiya's backyard. The photograph was taken in summer when the air smelled sweet and the sun warmed his skin, smiling widely into the camera as beads of sweat ran down his temple.

His parents seemed particularly happy in that picture, even when he couldn't really remember that day.

 _He put his keys back into his jacket pocket when he saw the faint light coming from the kitchen._

 _"Is dad here already?" he mumbled to himself as he opened the door to the bakery. As he suspected, Naruto found his father searching through one of the cupboards on the wall._

 _Despite his back turned toward him, he heard his son entering the kitchen, "Isn't it too early for your shift?"_

 _Naruto stripped off his jacket and hung it on the clothes stand by the door, before he slipped into his stained white shirt. "Making the cake took longer than I expected. It's already this late so sleeping won't bring me much." He walked to his father's side and looked over his shoulder to see what he was doing. "I just took Hinata home and thought I could wait for you here."_

 _His mother would scold him in the morning. She always did whenever he pulled an all-nighter together with his father in the bakery. But she had reached a point where she accepted that there was nothing she could do to prevent it from happening again._

 _Minato chuckled and turned around, the measuring cup he was searching for in his hand. "She was still here? This late?"_

 _Naruto smirked. "Yeah, you know her. She wanted to wait until I was finished." He rolled up his sleeves. "She fell asleep, though..." he murmured more to himself._

 _He looked up at his father, signaling him that he was waiting for instructions on what he could do to help him. But Minato watched him with this kind of gaze that seemed very far away. He always appeared somehow different when he wore his patissier uniform. He never put the hat on but to Naruto, he still looked dazzling._

 _"I've seen the cake in the refrigerator, it looks good," he said, his eyes now focusing on his son again. "Your mother and I are really proud of you, you know." Naruto was struck by the emotion swaying in his voice. He averted his eyes on the ground, trying not to get overwhelmed by it._

 _"You practically grew up in this shop because both your parents have worked here your whole life and we were always so busy," Minato filled the measuring cup with flour and put it in a bowl. "I often wondered whether you were somehow pushed to do and like these things."_

 _Naruto's head shot up quickly. "Dad, you know that's not true. I never felt like you guys forced me or anything. I like working here."_

 _Minato nodded and smiled. "I see how much fun you have when you work here and how good you are. Far better than I was your age. And I feel less guilty for being happy that you enjoy doing the same thing as me."_

 _"Dad," Naruto said, "I don't know what will happen in the future and what job I'll do but I can say that I'm happy with the way my life is going right now."_

 _Hearing that filled his chest with such exhilaration that only a parent could feel, knowing that the boy he had given life to, who he had sworn to protect and cherish was happy, something so seemingly arbitrary but something very important._

 _Minato embraced Naruto and patted his back, he could feel Naruto's arms enclosing him._

He had felt so gravely content with his life back then. And maybe because his memories were fading a little, maybe because of how much easier the world seemed to be back then but it was like he had been harboring a kind and volume of happiness that was unattainable now. Like when you lift your head towards the sky in the night and stretch out your hand to pluck a star when you know you wouldn't reach it.

Even though he had come back to the place he considered his home, being here, as anticipated, didn't feel the way it used to do. He hadn't expected to feel this empty as if he was floating in the darkness trying to find shapes he once knew.

His cell phone started ringing and he had to adjust his position to get to it in the pocket of his jeans. A quick look on the display showed him that it was Shikamaru calling and for a moment he faltered in picking up his call.

"Hey." Shikamaru's greeting was accompanied by noisy chattering and laughter in the background. Naruto could identify Kiba's voice.

"Hey, what's up?" He disguised the fact that he was surprised he had called. He hadn't heard anything from them since the wedding.

"Have you eaten yet?" Shikamaru asked after a pause.

"No, not yet."

"Well, we all kinda met up for dinner spontaneously and wanted to ask whether you want to join us?"

Naruto wondered why the offer to eat with his school friends made him so nervous. Why it felt like he hadn't already befriended them many years ago. They were still basically the same people.

"Listen, you don't have to if you don't want," Shikamaru said when Naruto omitted to answer him. "Everyone is just asking about you, you know."

"Sorry. Yeah, sure I'll come. Send me the address."

"Okay, see you then."

* * *

Because it was the mid-week the parking lot of the restaurant was pretty much empty. Naruto could already see Shikamaru standing outside the entrance of the restaurant when he shut his car door. He hadn't seen him yet, was instead taking a pull on his cigarette as he looked at something in the sky.

"You still smoke." Naruto quickly walked up to him. It was a familiar sight, Shikamaru with an occasional cigarette between his fingers and an expression on his face like nothing in the world could bother him for at least a few minutes. It reminded him of leisure hangouts after school in parks or on curbstones when they had nothing else to do, where every so often Shikamaru would whip out a cigarette from his jacket pocket.

"Yeah, well, sometimes." Naruto didn't now whether to believe him completely but he took it without a comment and watched him crush the cigarette butt with the tip of his shoe.

"Let's go, I'm freezing my ass off anyway." And just then Naruto noted how cold the wind was that blew against his face, he nodded and followed him inside.

The restaurant was nearly empty and smelled like grilled meat and oil. Shikamaru had told him that it belonged to one of his friends' parents and that the group tried to meet up now and then when they had the time.

In the farthest corner of the restaurant stood a long table where their group sat. They were by far the loudest in the room but no one really seemed bothered by it, even when Kiba soundly called out his name when there was still some distance between them.

Shikamaru silently shuffled away and sat down on the other side next to a woman, who placed a hand on his leg, while Kiba grabbed some empty pillow to sit on and pulled Naruto to the ground.

There were some faces Naruto didn't recognize but he still greeted everyone with a smile and a nod.

When he got to Hinata, who was sitting diagonal opposite him, his smile cramped as she was looking at him with an expression he was unsure what it meant. It made him doubt that she was happy to see him at all and for a moment it felt like everyone else on the table noticed too as he was starting to stare at her.

"You're hungry, right?" Ino asked and diverted his attention on the meat sizzling on one of the grills placed in their midst. "Dig in." It was an awkward transition but it served its purpose and Naruto averted his gaze.

Ino's boyfriend, Sai, was smiling at him in a very odd way as if he knew more about him than he should. He had done the same thing at the wedding and it was just as uncomfortable as it had been that day. So Naruto quickly looked away and planned on keeping his gaze from his and Ino's general direction for the rest of the evening.

Some talk show played on the tv hanging up on the wall next to them. He couldn't hear what was said but the people on the screen were laughing about something the host had said.

When Naruto's eyes fell on the heavily build man on the other end of the table, he introduced himself as Chouji. He worked together with Shikamaru but would apparently inherit this restaurant from his parents once they retired. He also seemed to have mastered the art of grilling, as the others had explained him.

"Neji isn't here?" Naruto asked.

"No, he is still on his honeymoon." Kiba reached with his chopsticks for a piece of meat on the grill.

"When I called him yesterday, he told me how he and Tenten want to come back as soon as possible. Weeks of doing nothing wasn't really something for them, he said." Hinata added before nibbling on her drink.

Kiba sighed loudly. "The day he became a prosecutor was the day he lost the rest of his fun."

Naruto snickered. "Was he ever really fun, though?"

"That's true." Several people laughed and Kiba threw another piece of meat into his mouth.

 **12 years old**

"I told you, this was a bad idea!" Kiba called after him. Naruto turned his head toward his friend, who was grinning back at him as he tried to overrun him.

"I didn't force you to do it!" They ran into each other when they tried to turn around the next corner. Behind them Shino was mumbling apologies to the students they were pushing away and Shikamaru was trying to keep up with the speed of the group.

"I'm telling you, he isn't following us anymore," Shikamaru called and when Naruto stopped the others did too. They stood there numbed, staring at the end of the corner and waiting for their teacher, Kakashi, to appear. Nothing happened for a few seconds, where classmates passed them with judging eyes.

"Do you think that he saw us?" Naruto whispered.

"We ran away pretty fast," Shino stated, not understanding the reason Naruto lowered his voice. He wanted to ask whether whispering was really necessary when they saw someone walk around the corner and they started running again.

"Was it him?" Kiba asked.

"I don't know." Naruto led the group down the stairs and outside on the schoolyard, which was dotted with students enjoying their lunch break.

The group ran along the wall of the building and hid behind the next corner, where they came to a halt. With quickened breathing, they exchanged looks and started laughing before they poked their heads out to see around the corner and watch the doors to the school. But no one followed them and they sighed in relief.

"What did you do now?"

The four boys startled up and slowly turned their heads to Neji standing behind them. Even though he was only one year older than them in moments like these he appeared somewhat like an adult. He had the same look, crossed his arms and denounced them the same way an adult did.

"Nothing." Naruto didn't even try to sound convincing. He wondered how Neji had managed to appear right here at exact this time to catch them when he could have been everywhere else in this school. It was moments like these that made Naruto speculate whether Neji really did know everything; everything not only concerning school subjects.

"Of course you did, I can see it in your faces." And as if to proof his point he took his time to consider each of them directly. "Can't you just play ball or something? Instead of playing stupid pranks that will get you in trouble."

 **24 years old**

"Wasn't that when we put that water bucket above the classroom door?" Kiba laughed and clapped his hand on his knee.

"No no, that was when we drew faces on that ugly group picture of the teachers that hung in the entrance hall," Shikamaru corrected him, the woman, that Naruto had concluded to be his girlfriend, blew air out of her nose and started laughing.

"The one with the water bucket was when we hid in the shed by the basketball court afterward. But Neji caught us that time too," Naruto said, his legs started to fall asleep and he shifted his position.

"Ah, right." The events of that day were passing in front of Kiba's eyes. He looked at Hinata then. "The floor was flooded with water because we couldn't keep the bucket from falling down immediately and Hinata hid us in the shed because she was scared that we would get expelled or something."

"Considering the mess you made, that was very possible." Hinata looked down at her plate as she relived the panic she had felt that day.

"And Sakura was scolding us together with Neji in the shed while we hid between basketballs and volleyball nets." Kiba disguised his voice exaggeratedly to imitate her. " _As class president, I can't condone you behaving like this._ "

Sakura's face reddened and she kicked him beneath the table. "I don't sound like that."

"On that day you did," Kiba responded and dodged another attack from her leg.

Hinata's phone rang and everyone looked at her for a second before she excused herself and left the table with the phone pressed against her ear.

Naruto's eyes followed her as she went away and disappeared in some hallway at the back of the restaurant. A sign above the entry showed that the restrooms were in that hallway too and he finally saw his opportunity to talk to her alone.

For some reason he hadn't felt this intense urge to talk to her until he had seen that sign, shining above him like a beacon of light in his uncertainty.

Since the wedding, his thoughts had been continuously filled with her. How she had sounded, had looked at him in those fleeting moments where he had managed to get to her in that wedding hall. But she always slipped away somehow and he knew that she did that deliberately. That was why he hadn't even been able to call her even though he had somehow managed to get her number that day. And a part of him was probably afraid of what she would say to him. If she told him that she didn't want to have anything to do with him anymore, coming home, being here, wouldn't be the same thing.

But he had to do it and who knew whether an opportunity like this would present itself to him in the near future. So he stood up, casually pounding on his blood clotted legs and told the table that he had to use the restroom.

The long hallway was darker than the rest of the restaurant. Family pictures hung on the walls, some of them old enough for their colors to fade away beneath the glass that framed them. Pictures of heartily smiling people who all looked very much like Chouji.

Single lamps were hanging on the walls, bathing the place in a light that made the white walls look yellow.

Hinata stood at the far end of the hallway, by a huge window that filled the narrow wall from the ground to the ceiling. The yard behind the window was so pitch black that it felt like Hinata was standing right at the end of the world. She was still talking on the phone, her eyes focused on her foot, dragging over the ground as she swung her leg back and forth.

He couldn't hear a word she said because he was far too occupied with trying to get to her in his nervousness. He passed the restroom doors but left some distance between them as he didn't want to interrupt her call.

Hinata only then realized that Naruto was there when she put her phone away and wanted to go back to the others. He was standing in the middle of the hallway, looking rather ominous the way his face was slightly in shadows.

When their eyes met she could see him taking a deep breath before he closed in on her. She had to look away to prepare herself for what was coming.

Naruto was known for his persistence. It made him succeed because he didn't give up on things, it made it hard to deter him from things he had already decided he would do and it made it impossible for her to somehow escape facing him now.

She knew that he was watching her face as she focused on that one thread that stuck up from his collar.

"Are you angry with me? Because I didn't contact you the first time I got back?" He was sounding a little angry himself.

"No, I'm not." She could hear herself sounding like a child that was debating with its parent.

"Why are you avoiding me then?"

"I'm not avoiding you," she said as she refrained from looking him in the eye.

"Of course you are, you're doing it right now."

Naruto opened his mouth to continue but halted. He ran his hand through his hair and sighed loudly. And as he watched her, still doing that thing with her fingers when she was unsure and reminding him so much of her as a teenager, his features softened.

"Why did you stop writing me?" This wasn't what he had planned to say but it was something he had wanted to ask her for a very long time.

The question made Hinata raise her gaze so quickly that she had forgotten her intention of avoiding him.

"Whenever I called it felt as if you wanted to hang up as quickly as possible. Your letters and emails got shorter until they stopped completely. I felt as if-" He stopped because that part was the hardest to say out loud. Because until now it had only swirled around in his head. An idea he avoided because he didn't want it to be true. "As if you didn't want anything to do with me anymore."

 _As if I was meaningless now._

Hinata's eyes were widened, her lips moved in an attempt to say something but they didn't manage to form words.

Naruto's chest rose and fell quickly. At least she was looking at him now.

"I did those things because I missed you." Hinata pressed her lips together like she had told a secret that wasn't supposed to be exposed to the world. "I missed you so much. Naruto, you were my best friend when you went away and you weren't there anymore."

For a while they just stared at each other, trying to decide who of them should continue the conversation, waiting for the other one to do so.

"You wrote how much you liked your new school and how you found new friends and a place to work on your baking. And I was so happy for you, I really was." Hinata nodded heavily, desperately in need to convince him. "With every letter and every phone call you sounded happier. Going away really had helped you."

And it had. Naruto remembered waking up one day and not having that dull ache in his chest.

"But every time I threw a letter into the mailbox I always somehow hoped that this would be the piece of writing that would bring you back, even though I knew it wouldn't. You had a new life I wasn't part of and I was used to being part of your life because I have been since I can remember. Every day I felt like something was missing."

For a moment Naruto couldn't see anything else but the quivering of her lips. Her eyes had glazed over and she had formed her hands into fists. He could sense the weight of her hurt filled voice on him.

Hinata sniffled. "I felt so horrible for that. You had good reasons, very good reasons, to go away. But I was selfishly only thinking about myself. About how much I was hurting. Isn't that horrible?"

Naruto was flooded by all those things she said. How had he misjudged her so incorrectly? When he knew what kind of person she was when he knew how kind she was. He had been so scared of having her think badly of him, that he had thought badly of her.

She took a deep breath and her voice became steadier again. "So I stopped. Because I was scared of missing you too much. And I felt less horrible." She quickly wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. "But I guess that was selfish too."

Images of the phone resting in his lap clouded his head. How he had stared at it after a phone call that hadn't even lasted three minutes. Memories of how far away her voice sounded. The sound of his own voice reading her emails over and over again, thinking there was something missing because there was no way she had only this little to tell him. Days where he checked his mailbox several times, convinced that the postman had lost her letter.

Everything made so much sense now.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't be angry with you. I'm not." She was more composed now but her eyes were glinting with a trace of guilt. She said the following words very slowly. "I just need to adjust to the fact that you're back."

"I am," Naruto clarified. "I am back for good."

Hinata gaped at him as if she had just now realized that this was true; that the fact that he was back had just now hit her really; that she was just now understanding what those words meant.

"You're back," she repeated more softly and Naruto nodded.

But then she snapped out of the trance-like state she had gone into. "I should get back to the others." And with that she walked away quickly, her shoes clicking on the stone floor.

Naruto exhaled loudly and leaned against the wall. He should wait a little bit before he went back, to avert suspicion. He was unsure whether that would really work with a group of people that all pretty much knew that he had never had the intention of using the restroom when he stood up from that table. But he needed time to process everything anyway, so he didn't mind staying away from them a while longer.

Despite the emotions that had stirred up in the past minutes, he felt a kind of relief in his chest. Somehow that feeling of floating away in the darkness wasn't there anymore. He smiled and saw his face mirrored in the window next to him. This was the face of someone who started to feel like he was right at the place where he was supposed to be.

He turned around, walked down the hallway and returned to the table with his friends. Managing to glance at Hinata for just a fleeting moment; she did the same thing.

"Naruto, we were just wondering whether you're still staying at a hotel. "Ino asked, her and Sai's hands enclosed with each other on the table.

"Yes, I am."

"But you have already got a place?"

"Yeah, I'm moving in this weekend. My stuff's going to arrive on Saturday."

"Do you need help moving in?" Kiba asked now, his body supported on his arms behind him.

"Oh, you don't have to. It'll probably take the whole day, you wouldn't want to spend your Saturday like that." Naruto gestured wildly with his hands.

"It's gonna take even longer when you have to do all that by yourself. I'm free this weekend, I can help. Pretty sure Shikamaru can help too, right?" Kiba pointed with his chin in Shikamaru's direction on the other side of the table.

"Sure, I don't work on weekends." Naruto inspected Shikamaru to find any indication that he did not want to help him move in on his day off but he did not seem to be put off by the idea.

"Oh, me too," Ino piped in with a raised hand as if they were in class.

"Hinata, you don't work on weekends either. You can come too, right?" Kiba now directed his question toward Hinata, who had appeared absent-minded during the conversation.

Naruto's eyes quickly shot at her.

"Huh?" She was surprised of being addressed so suddenly. "Yes." The word had rolled off her mouth unconsciously and her lips pressed together in the realization that she had agreed to meet Naruto again so soon.

"It's set then, just send us the time and address," Kiba concluded and hit Naruto's back soundly.

The group started to talk about the times they would have to go to work tomorrow and Naruto looked up at the tv. It showed a smartly dressed woman presenting the news. He still couldn't hear anything but the subtitles with the bold letters on the bottom announced a high probability of the first snow falling next week.

His eyes shifted to Hinata, who was watching the screen too. He could see how her mouth opened just a little bit before she averted her eyes from the tv and looked at him, in a way that she was sure that his eyes would be on her.

When you had a special person in your life, one thing you experience with this person could forever be marked as a reminder of them. Like carved initials in a tree, never really lost, those moments could be anything; seeing a shooting star or making shadow puppets on a wall or riding a bike down a certain street. Yet, because you felt grand at this one moment this seemingly ordinary thing becomes something meaningful. It was stuck with you. That was why whenever it snowed they thought of each other. Because it was carved into them like that.

Hinata was his special person and the first snowfall was one seemingly ordinary thing that was somehow carved into them.

* * *

It's been a while but I finally managed to finish this. With how busy I am with university and how long the next chapter is going to be, I'm not sure when I'll be able to update next. Even though I hope it won't take as much as it took me to finish this one, I can't promise anything.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter even when it was very Naruto centered and didn't had that many scenes where Naruto and Hinata were really together. The next one will be filled with them tho. Please comment and tell me if you liked it!


	6. Chapter 6

**8 years old**

Naruto and Hinata had pushed their chair as close to the shop window as possible. Their gazes occasionally lifted at the graying sky, with swinging feet and crayons in their hands, they waited for the first snowfall of this winter. The weather forecast had predicted snowfall for today and even though the chances to see it happening were slipping with every minute the sky turned darker, the pair was still hopeful.

He listened to Hinata humming tunes that were unfamiliar to him as she colored the petals of the flower she was drawing with a purple crayon. Sometimes her elbow would hit him lightly in the side and she would always mumble a "sorry" before she continued and he would do the same when he accidentally hit her with his foot. They were presumably growing too big to continuously sit in their chair together but neither of them accepted the defeat yet instead both continued to squeeze their bodies next to each other between the cushions.

Naruto's parents were up and about in the kitchen. Sometimes his mother's head would appear in the doorframe to check on the children and ask them what they were doing or whether they were hungry before she scurried away again. During the busy holidays, Minato and Kushina would have to spend most of their time in the cake shop.

The children had offered their help but after a while, there was nothing much more they could do with their small bodies, which weren't tall enough to see above the counter, and their lack of skill.

 **24 years old**

Naruto adjusted the box in his hand before he shut the door to his godfather's former beat up car, which Jiraiya had handed down to him before buying himself a brand new one.

He checked the inside again from the windows to see whether he had forgotten anything, then he turned away and crossed the street to the apartment building he would live in from today on.

The wind blew in his neck and the fingers froze around the box so he walked a little quicker. When he saw a woman in front of the doors to the building he stopped. She was biting the nail of her thumb and her eyes were shifting from the doorbell nameplate to her phone in the other hand. Naruto contemplated how to call out to her.

"Hinata."

She didn't greet him when she turned her head, just gaped at him in surprise instead even when Naruto carefully lifted one hand to wave at her.

"You are early," he remarked and Hinata started to frown.

"Weren't we supposed to meet at 10?" She glanced at her phone again. She had missed her bus on purpose and the one after that too so that she arrived later than the time they had agreed on because she didn't want to risk to be alone with Naruto in his apartment.

"No, at 11." A beat passed. Despite the situation and Hinata's obvious nervousness, Naruto was glad to see her. The awkwardness still remained whenever they locked eyes and when they had to search for the right words to say but he was pleased that she was here.

"So, no one's here yet?" Hinata inspected her surroundings as if one of her friends could jump out of the leafless bushes.

"No, you're the first." Naruto moved to open the door to the building and stood there in the doorway for a while observing her. He adjusted the box again, which was starting to get heavy, and held open the door with his back.

"Aren't you coming?" he asked. When Hinata faced him she questioned herself whether God or destiny or whoever was in charge of her life had a pleasure in teasing her. Whether she had brought this on herself the moment she had decided to prevent this exact thing from happening.

"Or do you want to wait in the cold instead?" There was a teasing tone in his voice and an amused twitching of the corner of his mouth. It reminded her of when they were 14 and he thought that it was funny how nervous she got at her first day officially working at the bakery and eventually having to face customers.

"I'm coming." She slipped passed him through the door and waited for him to follow her inside without turning her head.

No matter how awkward she had felt with him since he had come back, none of it could compare to what was happening between them when the doors to the elevator closed to get them to the 12th floor. Never had her breathing seemed so loud, never had someone else breathing seemed so loud. Somewhere along the 7th floor, Naruto started tapping with his foot and she could feel it underneath her shoes. She was careful not to accidentally touch him when the doors opened again and they stepped out.

Hinata trailed Naruto to the door that had the number 42 on it. Again balancing the box in one arm, he pulled a key chain out of his front pocket and opened the door. At this instant, Hinata realized how intimate this moment was and how much more intimate this would be once they were inside together with no people or even furniture to distract themselves with.

When they stepped over the threshold and Hinata moved to take off her shoes, Naruto hurried off somewhere to get slippers and wordlessly put them in front of her feet.

Her gaze followed him about the room as he inspected the few boxes and a suitcase he had collected in one corner of the spacious room. She was still standing by the entrance when he rushed to the open kitchen on the left where he rummaged through a plastic bag on the counter.

"Do you want something to drink?" He asked, without looking at her. "I bought some bottles of water and soda but then I realized that I don't have any glasses until the movers arrive. So..." Naruto pulled out a package of juice boxes and removed one. "This will have to suffice." He smiled when he walked over to hand the juice to her and she smirked too. It was orange flavored.

Naruto started mumbling to himself that he could have just gotten plastic cups instead and Hinata didn't know what to do with that. It went silent. He startled her when he suddenly grabbed the coat that was draped over her arm.

"I can take this, you can look around if you want." He walked off again. "Even though there isn't really much to look at."

Hinata slowly moved to the opposite side of the room, which was illuminated by a panorama window that presented a stunning view of the whole city. Thick, gray clouds hung above the buildings, some of which she tried to identify and match to streets she knew until they faded away along the horizon. How different everything seemed when you were beholding it from above.

"The view is amazing."

"It is, isn't it?" Naruto stepped next to her, sipping out of a juice box of his own. "It's one of the reasons I chose this apartment."

A moment passed where both silently drank their juice and watched the winter scenery of leafless trees and rushing cars before them. Then he pointed at something in the distance. "You can even see our school from here." He watched Hinata track the direction of his finger.

"That's right," she murmured as she wondered whether she could see his apartment from the teachers' lounge or her classroom and chose to find out next Monday.

Hinata glanced at Naruto but averted again when she caught him watching her. Her gaze fell to the boxes by her feet and she saw a patissier uniform folded neatly in one of them. She remembered how Naruto used to try on his father's uniform and the scowl he carried whenever he realized how it was still too loose around his shoulders. She wanted to see him wear it.

Even though she didn't want to pry in his private things, her gaze roamed over the rest of the boxes when Naruto left her side to get something from the kitchen. Hinata found a frame with a picture of Naruto and his parents right on the top of one. She kneed down and retracted it from the box, reflecting on how peculiar it felt to see a picture of smiling people that were no more.

When she was about to put it back she saw the hair clips she had given Naruto when they were little.

"You still have these?" She wasn't even sure whether Naruto was in her local vicinity to hear her. She was just surprised to see them again. Some of the plastic had peeled off at certain places and one of the claws was broken off. Because Naruto tended to keep them in the kitchen he thought it had been burned in the fire but she didn't say that out loud.

"Of course I do." Hinata turned her head to him and tried to read the expression on his face. It felt as though he wanted to add something but he just stared at her. And as she stared back at him, again realizing how his appearance had changed over the years -his hair, his shoulders, his height-, standing in his own empty apartment, it hit her how long ago it all was. How they were adults now. How everything she knew about him was a memory, like the hair clip in her hand.

Naruto noted the shift in the way her eyes met his as if a shadow had been cast over them. He wanted to ask her what she was thinking but she turned away to put the token of their past back and began sipping on the straw for her juice as she straightened her back.

The phone in his pocket rang and it was like a starting signal for him to breathe again. It was Shikamaru, who was standing outside the building and inquiring which apartment he should ring as Naruto hadn't put up his name on the nameplate outside yet.

"It's apartment 42, wait I'm gonna let you in." He rushed to the intercom and pushed the button for the front door. He remained by the entrance, Hinata on the other end of the room, and fiddled with the package of slippers he had bought yesterday until Shikamaru was standing in front of him.

Shikamaru greeted Naruto with half a smile and was about to take off his shoes when he noticed Hinata glued to the spot by the windows. She had contemplated whether to come to the door to greet him but picturing herself standing beside Naruto welcoming their friend into this apartment embarrassed her. Now that she watched Shikamaru's eyes shifting between Naruto and herself, furrowing his brows at how they tried to persuade him that this wasn't awkward at all, she wished she had greeted him by the door like a normal person.

Shikamaru cleared his throat, which added another layer of uncomfortableness to this situation.

"So Hinata, you're already here?"

"I thought we were meeting at 10."

Shikamaru produced an "Ah" sound, which formed her understand that he didn't believe her.

"I really did mistake the time," she added a little anxiously, which made Shikamaru peer at her as if she was talking complete gibberish.

"Okay?" he retorted after a while with a questioning glance back at Naruto, who didn't want to be part of this exchange at all. An unsettling silence followed and Naruto wished that Kiba or Ino had arrived first in Shikamaru's place solely because they both had the talent to improve distressing situations with their talk and distract everyone.

Shikamaru began walking around the apartment when there wasn't much to consider except the general facility and blank walls. He walked into the bedroom on the right side of the entrance, which had unopened boxes with materials to build a bed and a dresser and a mattress leaned against a wall. Naruto explained that it even had a balcony and slid open one of the tall windows to it but quickly closed it again when the chilly air blew against his face.

There was also a small office by the spot where Hinata had been standing and a bathroom next to it, which Shikamaru inspected only shortly from the doorway as the rooms were empty and there was really nothing to see.

Luckily for all three of them, Ino arrived shortly after and it was like she was banishing the sullen mood with a flip of her ponytail and that lilting way she talked. She told everyone that Sakura couldn't make it because she had to take over someone else's shift at the hospital. Ino was soon enthusiastically showing herself around the place as if she could see more than just white walls and empty rooms. She expressed how much she enjoyed moving into new places because it was exciting to decorate everything. Shikamaru couldn't share her sentiment but didn't elaborate as he refrained from possibly making Naruto think that he was unhappy to be here.

Kiba arrived shortly after 11 nearly together with the movers who filled the apartment with furniture and boxes, which Naruto sorted into their corresponding rooms. There was a little struggle with getting the sofa to the 12th floor and through the door but after that was managed as well, the movers saw themselves off and left.

Firstly Shikamaru and Naruto started building the bed and Ino took the liberty to determine where everything had to stand in the living room and navigated Kiba through it all. When he shouted that Naruto should be the one to decide as it was his place, Naruto replied that it didn't really matter to him and if he disliked the arrangement he could just move it around anyway.

In a reaction to that Ino gave Kiba a smug smile and told him and Hinata to push the couch a little more to the left.

After a while, Naruto switched rooms with Kiba when he wanted to install the tv in the living room so that they had some sound in the background during the occasional silence that settled over them not because they didn't have anything to say but because they got so engrossed with the work they were doing.

There was one moment where Hinata watched Naruto from the side of her eye as he lifted his uniform from the box and put the hair clips in its chest pocket before he hung it on the bathroom door and went through the rest of his stuff to sort everything out one by one. He smiled to himself as Ino talked over the cartoon showing on tv and Kiba commanded Shikamaru to hold the board straight and Shikamaru argued why he always had to be the one holding things. He felt content with his life as he listened to their voices because after 8 years of being away he still had people to do this with him.

 **8 years old**

Naruto rolled over on the futon and it made Hinata raise her head from her pillow. He looked up at her but he couldn't see her face. Her bed made noises when she adjusted her sleeping position and Naruto watched the blanket rise and fall again.

Hanabi had quit moving some time ago and was probably already asleep. At first, she had found it fascinating that Naruto was sleeping on the ground between her and her sister and was chatting so loudly that Hiashi had to come inside to shush her two times.

Naruto himself didn't feel like sleeping, it was the first time he was allowed to sleep anywhere else other than a relative's or Jiraiya's house. His parents would have work through the night to make the cakes and pastries for the holidays and Hiashi had offered them to let Naruto sleepover at his house as Jiraiya had caught the flu and their shop was on the same street anyway. Kushina and Minato had gratefully accepted his offer and gifted him a cake when he arrived at the shop earlier to fetch the children.

"Too bad that it didn't snow today," Hinata whispered and Naruto was surprised to hear her speak again.

"Mhm, the weather lady was wrong." He turned to face her even when he couldn't see more than a shadow.

"Maybe because we were too excited about it." Naruto thought about that for a while because he wouldn't want the world to work like that.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe we shouldn't expect it," he said then.

"We should just let it happen." Her voice sounded drowsy and he could hear that she was on the verge of falling asleep.

Naruto thought about what time it was right now, whether it was already past midnight. Then he thought about his parents and what they might be doing at this moment. Whether they were talking or smiling or discussing something or close to finishing their work. He hoped that his father's back wasn't aching from looking down the whole time and that his mother wasn't too tired. And with that thought, he fell asleep.

 **24 years old**

The tv was the only source of light and the room still smelled like the pizza they had delivered to them this afternoon. Naruto's gaze roamed around the room, occasionally halting here and there. Ino was sighing behind him on the couch he was leaning against. She laid outstretched and bounced one of her legs up and down off the cushion, what he could feel in his back.

Hinata, Kiba, and Shikamaru had spread out on the floor, forming some sort of half circle.

"Thanks, guys. Who knows how long I would have taken to do all this on my own," Naruto said.

"No problem," Kiba replied, without even moving or glimpsing at him, as though it actually was no big deal when in reality it was. It was a huge deal. But Naruto didn't say anything more, he was just glad that they were here.

"I saw some pictures of you in Paris when I was sorting through your stuff, you were in France?" Ino took a sip from her soda and laid down again. "I always wanted to go there." Even though she examined the ceiling she knew the others were listening.

"Yeah." Naruto laid down on the ground with the others because his back was hurting from continuously have to bend down when building his dresser. "After graduating I entered a baking contest and somehow won a chance to study abroad. I entered for the experience. Didn't even expect to get third place."

„Wow. that's amazing."

"It was really cool. We traveled through France and Germany. I even stayed longer after I finished the program."

"You can speak French and German then?" Ino asked.

Naruto chuckled. "Not really. I just gestured with my hands a lot."

It was quiet for a while, then Hinata said, "Must have been scary, being alone in a different country without knowing the language." She had imagined herself in that situation and didn't believe that she would have mastered it as well as she trusted Naruto had.

Naruto reminisced for a moment and came to the conclusion that it hadn't felt much different than when he left here. But he didn't say that out loud, not wanting to dampen the mood. "I guess it was at first. But after a while, you get used to everything." He wasn't really talking about his time in Europe anymore but he hoped no one else noticed.

While Ino began quizzing him about France, especially Paris, and Naruto answered as detailed as he could, taking them on a trip to a country far away, Hinata squirmed around and accidentally laid her hand next to Naruto's. They were touching and she could hear him pause in whatever he was describing.

She was oblivious to why she didn't just remove her hand. But Naruto didn't either so she let it be there, touching his skin so lightly that it should barely be sensible. Yet she didn't just barely sense it, the sensation of his hand against hers was so ubiquitous that for a moment it was like there were only him and her.

Hinata remembered every encounter they had since the wedding and wondered whether this was the first time they touched since she had hugged him goodbye and he vanished around the corner of the street in Jiraiya's car.

For some reason, this moment seemed much more intimate than everything else they had done since they had met. This little touch and this closeness felt like something they had never done before. Just this faint brush of the back of their hands.

But then Kiba rose from where he was laying and Shikamaru did too and they retreated their hands and this moment was gone.

Naruto stood up to switch on the lights and Ino stretched her limbs. She marveled at how pretty the view outside was when the city lights showed.

"Hinata, you need a ride?" Kiba asked as he gathered his belongings.

"Yes, Hanabi borrowed my car today." She had already told him that but he nodded. Hinata tried to not meet Naruto's eyes across the room as she quickly grabbed her purse and slipped into her coat.

They said their goodbyes at the door, despite Hinata staring at the ground Naruto happily thanked them again for everything.

"No biggie."

This time Naruto shook his head and said, "It is." And he guessed that Kiba understood what he meant because he smiled at him. He watched and waved at them until the doors to the elevator closed.

Naruto collected the pizza boxes and glasses dotted around the room in the kitchen when he noticed Hinata's phone on the counter. She had left in such a rush to not face him that she had forgotten to take it with her. He laughed faintly at the irony and picked it up. He might still make it to her if he hurried. But that wasn't necessary because when he was in the hallway, the doors to the elevator opened and Hinata was right there.

She was surprised to see him and as she glanced at her phone in his hand she again wondered if some mighty force was controlling her life. If maybe there were some experience she had to make for some reason.

"I forgot my phone," she said when Naruto had already walked up to her to wordlessly hand her the device.

"Thanks."

"Wait." She traced every movement he made with her eyes, how he stepped closer and how he turned the switch to hold the elevator and its doors from moving.

"There is still something I haven't told you," he initiated, the look in his eyes had changed and Hinata could feel her heart pounding hard against her chest.

"You were the first person I came to see when I came back a few months ago. This summer I was thinking of visiting my parents' graves for their death anniversary and when I was finally here your school was the first place I went to. But when I saw you coming out of the building I couldn't come up to you because I wasn't sure whether you even wanted to see me and because I would eventually leave again and that would probably make you sad again. And I didn't want to do that to you. That's where I met Iruka by coincidence and he told me about the wedding."

He looked down for a while and scratched the back of his head and Hinata felt so sorry and regretful for, ever being angry at him about him supposedly not visiting her back then.

"After wandering around the city for a while I thought maybe I could visit the bakery and maybe it wouldn't pain the way it did back then. And when I was actually there it was only painful at the beginning and then it wasn't."

He had been so relieved that time that he began to cry right on the spot he was standing. He didn't want to be sad when he thought of his parents. He wanted his thoughts on them to be filled with happiness and warmth; of moments that made his heart flutter, moments that made him feel at ease. When he thought of them, he wanted his love for them to fulfill him. He wanted remembering them to be something that didn't hurt, something good. And when he had stepped back into the bakery that was what he felt; good.

"That's why I'm reopening it, that's why I'm back." He gave her a second to process that information. "And I wanted you to be the first to know, before everyone else, and tell you when it's just you and me, because that place is special to you too and because you are special to me."

He heard her inhale; she was pressing her hand with the phone against her chest. He was uncertain whether she felt uncomfortable with him telling her things like this. That was the last thing he wanted.

"I'm not asking you out or anything. I just want to hang out and maybe talk or not talk, it doesn't matter." He was shaking his head. "I just want to make sure that when we say goodbye today we'll see each other again."

He silently examined her for a while, his eyes had turned soft and he could feel himself wanting to embrace her but he didn't. She appeared as though she didn't know what to say and he didn't want to force her to give him a response either. So he turned the switch again and pushed the button for the ground floor and stepped back, while she was following his movements again. "Goodbye then."

The elevator doors shut and she was gone. He didn't want her to be gone. He wanted to stop the elevator or bolt down the stairs to outrun her and say hello to her again when the doors opened but he refrained from doing any of that.

While he stood there in the hallway for a few more minutes he wondered how one person could make someone feel like this. How Hinata could still make him feel like this; this yearning to be next to her and this anxiousness when he was actually next to her. How anything he shared with her seemed to matter a lot more than everything else.

* * *

Hinata's heart kept pounding hard and Naruto's words still dominated her thoughts when she was laying in bed. She was mumbling things and she couldn't breath when it felt like the blanket was suffocating her. She sat up and checked the time on her phone; 3:12. Her sight was getting unfocused as she opened her contacts and it was like her finger was moving on its own when she saw Naruto's name and she pressed it.

She was sure that he wouldn't pick up. She was unsure if she even wanted him to pick up. But when she held the phone to her ear and every ring was making her heart race a little quicker she thought that talking to him wouldn't be too bad. That after thinking about everything he had said not only today but everything she could remember him ever say, she didn't just wanted to think there thoughts but tell him. And right now she couldn't wait for daylight to do so.

"Hello?" His voice sounded clearer than she had expected.

"Hi, it's me."

"I know." She liked that he didn't remind her what time it was, she knew that very well herself. She liked that he waited for her to speak. And she liked how he said that he knew that it was her.

"Were you awake?"

"Yeah, I'm at the bakery right now, I couldn't sleep so I'm working."

Hinata felt the adrenaline rushing through her. "The bakery? You are there right now?"

"Yes."

"Wait for me, I'm on my way." She jumped up from her bed and was searching for pants to wear.

"What? You're coming-"

"I'll be there in a few minutes." Hinata ended the call without saying anything else. Pulled the next best hoodie over her head and wasn't even aware which jacket she slipped into when she left her bedroom.

Quietly she opened the door to Hanabi's room, where her younger sister slept soundly. Hinata's hand felt every surface in the room in search for her car keys. She rummaged through some of Hanabi's bags and jackets but couldn't find it. When Hanabi resounded in the darkness, Hinata was startled enough to drop one of her purses to the ground.

"What are you doing?" She was rubbing her eyes.

"I'm sorry, I didn't want to wake you but where are my keys?"

"Your keys?"

"Yes, I need the key to my car."

Hanabi pointed to a pile of clothes by her dresser. And Hinata rushed there and vigorously shook the clothes until she could hear the jangling of the keys.

"Wait, what do you need your keys for?" She had her phone in her hand and the brightness of the screen was blinding her when she wanted to check the time. "It's the middle of the night."

"I have to go somewhere," Hinata answered curtly and walked out of the room in big strides.

"Now?" Hanabi followed her with quick steps. "Where are you going at this time?"

"Shh. Or you'll wake dad." Hinata shortly halted in putting on her boots to make sure he hadn't heard them already.

"Tell me. What's going on?" Hanabi wasn't doing her best in speaking more quietly.

"Nothing. There is just a place I have to be right now. I'm back soon, don't worry." With that, Hinata opened the front door and rushed into the night.

8 years old

"Naruto." A voice was calling him quietly and someone was softly shaking his shoulder. Naruto's eyes tore open and he saw Hinata's face above him when it was still dark and the only thing he could distinguish was the pale color of her eyes.

"What's going on?"

"It's snowing," she said and she was smiling at him. He peered over her head to the window above her bed and saw the snow fall gently against the bleak night.

Naruto stared at it and Hinata was following his gaze to make sure that he saw it. Then she climbed back on her bed and Naruto did too. They moved to the window, slipped under the curtain so that the only thing that was keeping them from the snow was the glass.

He felt a rush of happiness in him when they supported themselves with their elbows on the window sill and leaned in so far that they could see their breaths fogging the glass.

The ground was still pavement and no snow had settled yet but this was the best part; when you could watch how the world gradually turned white.

"It worked," Hinata whispered. The end of the curtain what tickling their feet.

"What do you mean?" The snow fell harder now and both of them didn't look away.

"We stopped expecting it and just let it happen," Hinata said and she looked at him and he looked at her. Between the window and the curtain, it was just them.

Naruto's lips spread into a grin; he thought of snowball fights and snow angels. "You're right. We just let it happen."

24 years old

When he saw Hinata's car turn into the street he was surprised that she was actually here. He had had doubts that he understood her correctly but still waited outside the shop in case she really showed up. And she did.

She turned off the motor of her car, stepped out of the vehicle and walked towards him. Yet he still thought that he was imagining this somehow and he wanted to grasp her hand to know that she was actually here.

The boldness she had felt when she ran out of her house and rushed here in her car faded when she saw him standing there. He shouldn't have waited outside. The tip of his nose was red and he had pulled the hood of his down jacket over his head.

She stopped right in front of him. „Hi." Her breath visible in the air.

"Hi." He saw how her gaze moved from his face to the shop behind him. It was dim but you could see the light from the kitchen and the empty counter. There were chairs stacked up in one corner of the room because the tables hadn't been delivered yet. "Let's go inside."

He wanted to turn around but Hinata grabbed his hand. "Wait."

Her hand was warmer than his. At least now he knew that she was actually here.

"There is something I have to tell you before we go inside." She squeezed his hand and he glimpsed down at how they enclosed each other and squeezed hers back.

"Okay."

Hinata took a deep breath and she clasped him a little tighter. "I don't like amusement parks."

Naruto blinked at her and pushed his hood back. "What?"

"They are loud and crowded and I'm scared of most of the rides. I've never liked them."

He was starting to understand where she was trying to go with this. "But we went there every year."

"Yes, because the first time you asked me to go I didn't care where we were going. And the times after that I just wanted to go there with you, no, I wanted to be the one you chose to go there with."

He nodded and waited for her to continue. And again Hinata liked how he waited for her to speak.

"I didn't come to work early because it was convenient with the bus schedule or because I naturally wake up early in the morning. I did it to watch you work, even when it was just for a few minutes. I liked how you looked when you baked, it made me feel tingly and happy."

The tender gaze in his eyes right now made her breathless and her chest feel heavy and her toes curl and many other things that the eyes of the right person were remarkably able to cause.

"When I saw you at the wedding the feeling was the same. What I felt was the same as 8 years ago. And it was scary, how little my affection for you has lessened. It made no sense to me, how I could still be in love with you after not seeing you for such a long time." He flinched visibly at this part because it was the first time either of them had said _it_ out loud.

"But at home today I thought back to the time when you were gone and how there was nothing I wished for more than you to come back. And now you are back. So, I decided to be happy instead because my wish came true. Because it doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't matter whether it makes sense or not. Hang out and maybe talk or not talk, I would really like to do that. There is nothing I would like to do more."

He was smiling at her, not only with his mouth but also with his eyes.

Being with her like this right now was like the sudden realization you got when you noticed dust particles floating in a shaft of light or when the beauty of a sunset made you pause for a moment or when you glanced up at night and saw the infinite constellations of stars that make you think about the universe; the realization that you were alive, that you existed. Because the person you cherished the most in the world had a manner of seeing you that that made you special to them.  
That was what he felt when he looked at her. He felt elated and he couldn't remember ever feeling this feeling before but he wanted to feel like this forever.

He lifted his hand to her face a brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. He knew that his hands were cold but he wanted to touch her face so desperately. Her eyes sparkled and she wore clothes that looked as though she had thrown over the first thing she had seen and it was perfect. It was the way it was supposed to be.

His other hand, which she had ceased squeezing the moment she was done talking, moved to the other side of her face. His thumb stroked her cheek and she fisted his jacket by his waist with both her hands and they stood the closest they had ever stood. Then his hands wandered to her neck and a shiver ran down her spine. Not because it felt cold but incredibly warm. He smiled at her and she smiled back and they kissed.

Because there was not a moment they could pinpoint, because the feeling of affection had grown gradually, it was like they had been in love since the first moment they had seen each other. Since he had seen her pressing her palms against the counter of the bakery since she had seen him holding a plate with a piece of strawberry cake.

But indifferent to when it had originated, they were feeling the greatest magnitude of love right now because for once they just let it happen.

The air was cold and the thickness of their jackets hindered them from getting as close as they wanted to. But this moment still felt like one of those memories that wouldn't become blurry and fade after some time but would still glisten.

Their lips parted, their arms still holding each other. He stroked her hair and she closed her eyes. When she heard him chuckle she opened them again.

"What is it?"

He smiled from his eyes once again. "It's snowing."

Her head whipped up first before she peeked to the side and saw the snow fall like silent stars under the light of the street lanterns. She could feel them melt on her cheek.

"Do you think this is a sign or something?" she asked amused.

She could feel his laugh from the way he was holding her. "Maybe."

He lifted his head against the sky and the snow for a few seconds before turning his eyes on the bakery. "There is something I want to show you, do you still have time?"

She nodded. Time didn't really matter right now.

He captured her hand and led her into the bakery, there was still a bell that rung above the entrance. It was odd being back and the former furniture not being there, without the picture frames on the walls and sweets displayed on the counter. Naruto allowed her to study the place for a while. And it felt like the past and the present were mashing into one.

The kitchen smelled sweet and was warm because Naruto had been baking just a few minutes ago. He said that he had a lot of thoughts today and that baking helped to sort them out. It was something he had said often in the past and it was nice hearing it again.

"Now to what I wanted to show you." He took her hand again and brought her back to the front that was still unlit. He positioned her on a certain point in the room. "Right here."

Then he disappeared to the back of the shop but she could still hear his voice. "You remember how my mother was like the best in decorating and stuff?"

Hinata laughed. "Yes, I do."

"Well, I guess this proofs that I really am her son." Suddenly there were lights above her, strings of lights covering the whole ceiling in gold. Cut out stars hanging from them and ornament balls reflecting the glow on the walls and the ground and on Naruto when he walked back into the room. Everything glimmering as if it were coated it magic.

"It seems as if it's endless." She felt small; not in a bad way but in a way that made you realize that there was still so much left in the world to see. Like that time she was 6 and she had found this place for the first time.

When she averted her eyes from the ceiling again, Naruto was next to her and he took her hand gently as though he wanted to burn the sensation into his memory. The sensation of everything they were feeling at this exact moment.

She was so grateful that she had found this place back then when it was winter; that Kushina had brought her inside; that she shared a cake with Naruto in that big old green chair by the window. Every memory of that day she felt grateful for.

She felt grateful for Naruto being her best friend and she felt grateful that he was by her side right now, holding her hand and watching the snow with her.

* * *

And with this chapter, this story is completed. I want to thank everyone who has commented on this story and kept me motivated to finish. I would love to hear what you thought of it because I had a lot of fun working on this story. I thought of maybe writing an epilog one day but I actually feel the characters got a good conclusion. Anyway, thank you, for everyone, who read this!


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